EIGHTEEN new vote-counting machines arrived at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) provincial office at the Cebu Capitol on Monday.
Cebu provincial election supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano said these will be used to train election assistants and election officers on February 17-19.
They will, in turn, train members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) starting March 1.
Castillano said another round of mock elections might be held in April to iron out transmission glitches experienced during the mock elections last Saturday.
“The vote-counting machines were really accurate. All the results of the manual audit matched with that generated by the machines,” Castillano said.
He said Comelec was hopeful that there would be minimal transmission problems during the actual elections on May 9.
“The usual transmission time is five to 10 minutes. We are hoping that we won’t have that many transmission issues on election day because that’s one of the reasons for automation, to expedite the process and for faster results,” he said.
Castillano is set to turn over his position to Atty. Eliseo Labario. He has been temporarily transferred to Negros Oriental until the end of the election period in June as part of the reshuffling ordered by Comelec.