Canvassing fails due to glitch

CANVASSING of votes in two southern towns have failed because of technical problems in the Consolidated Canvassing System (CCS) of the Commission on Elections.

Malabuyoc Election Officer Mariela Remoroza said their CCS failed to initialize when they reconvened at 3 p.m. last Monday to start the canvass of election returns.

“The progress bar would stop at until 80 percent then the system would hang. We have been experiencing this problem since yesterday (Monday),” said Remoroza in Cebuano.

They also tried to remove and put back its batteries and used a contingency laptop for the configured SD card but to no avail.

The same problem was encountered in Santander. Election Officer Honorato Flores said the machine would show “Initialization report will not be printed, please call the national support center” and it would appear on the monitor every time they would try to initialize their CCS. He said the vote-counting machines (VCMs) from the town’s 20 clustered precincts were turned over to the Municipal Board of Canvassers (MBC) midnight of

Tuesday, but they were unable to canvass the election results. Santander has 11,577 voters.

In Malabuyoc, as of 8 p.m. yesterday the MBC had not yet reconvened. Remoroza said they had reported the matter to the Comelec National Technical Support Center, but they were told to wait for technicians.

BETTER VOTER TURNOUT

In Cebu City, more voters cast their votes during Monday’s local and national elections as compared to the 2013 elections.

Data from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) showed 83.3 percent of registered voters in the city actually went out to vote as compared to 81. 36 percent in 2013.

This is based on the Certificate of Canvass released by the Cebu City Board of Canvassers (CBOC) after yesterday’s proclamation.

“The way I see it, the voter turnout is higher because voters got curious with our issuance of the voter’s receipt and the new VCM (vote counting machine). Also, it is because of the fight between the presidentiables,” said Comelec Cebu City South District Election Officer Michael Sarno.

There are 630,003 registered voters in Cebu City. Of the number, 524,850 actually voted.

The Certificates of Canvas also showed that no ballot was rejected in all of the 837 clustered precincts in Cebu City.

In the 2013 elections, 445,576 actually voted out of the 547,681 registered voters then.

ELECTION PARAPHERNALIA

The 837 VCMs assigned in Cebu City have been collected by 2GO Travel and will be brought back to the Comelec office in Manila.

The ballot boxes containing the officials ballots have been turned over to the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO). Yesterday, the ballot boxes were kept at the Plaza Sugbo grounds outside City Hall, placed under tents and covered by nets.

The boxes containing the voter’s receipts were still in the Comelec Cebu City office yesterday although these were also supposed to be turned over to the CTO.

Comelec also has custody of the Posted Computerized Voters List (PCVL) and the Election Day Computerized Voters List (EDCVL).