Voting stopped in clustered precinct

Voting was stopped in a clustered precinct in Barangay Gabi, Cordova town because of wrong ballots. (CDN PHOTO/IZOBELLE PULGO)

Voting was stopped in one clustered precinct at the Gabi Elementary School polling center in Cordova because ballots assigned to these precincts contained the names of candidates in Barangay Jolomaynan in Dalaguete town.

The precinct numbers in this cluster are 74a, 74b, 76a and 76b. There are 772 voters in this clustered precinct. At around 5 p.m., some of them were able to vote using the extra ballots from other precincts in the polling center. But 722 voters were not able to cast their vote.

Commission on Elections Regional Director Jose Nick Mendros said during a press conference at the election media center at the Police Regional Office 7, that only 10 ballots contained the correct candidates for Barangay Gabi but these were sent to Barangay Jolomaynan.

He said the Comelec Central Office advised him to suspend the elections in that clustered precinct until official ballots will be printed.

“We will proceed with the elections after printing the ballots. As to when, I don’t know. It will be the decision of the Comelec en banc. Definitely it will be after election day because the ballots will have to be printed in Manila,” he said.

MISPRINTED

The chairman of the Board of Election Inspectors of the clustered precinct, Jaquelyn Arong, said they discovered the anomaly when the second voter realized that the names of the local candidates were incorrect and the ballot of the first voter was rejected by the VCM even after repeated attempts to feed it correctly.

“Ang ikaduha na nga mo-vote miingon siya nga mobotar siya sa mayor ug sa SB member. Sige siya ug pangita sa iyang botaran, dili mao ang pangan.

Diha na mi ka-discover, kadtong ikaduha nga miingon nga di daw mao, lahi man ning mga ngan sa mga SB members ug sa mayor (The second voter said she was voting for mayor and municipal council and couldn’t find the names. It was then that we discovered the names were incorrect),” she said.

According to Mendros, the Board of Election Inspectors received a sealed box from the Municipal Treasurer of Cordova marked “For Barangay Gabi, Cordova” and discovered that there were only 10 correct ballots.

Arong explained that there was no opportunity for them to discover the misprinted ballots earlier because the box was sealed and could be opened only at a designated time, and it had the correct information on the label.

“There is an instruction that we can only open the box at 6 o’clock in the morning,” Arong said in Cebuano.

A check with the polling precinct in Barangay Jolomaynan showed that the polling precinct had the correct number of ballots but also had 10 stray ballots intended for the Gabi Elementary School polling center.

“The problem is with Barangay Gabi because the printed ballots for the place are only those stray ballots sent to Jolomaynon,” Mendros said.

“If the issue was swapping of ballots, we could have addressed it right away. But the problem here is that there are really no printed ballots for Barangay Gabi,” he added.

ALEGRIA

At around 9:40 a.m., Cordova Election Assistant Jovito Beltran told the voters waiting outside the precinct that they had informed the Comelec regional office regarding the matter.

Later in the afternoon Beltran received a verbal order from Cordova Election Officer Rafael Nolasco Jr. to let the voters go to the polling center at the Alegria Elementary School and the Cordova Central School in Barangay Poblacion to cast their votes, but residents of Barangay Alegria refused to accommodate the Barangay Gabi voters.

“We had already agreed that the Barangay Gabi voters would vote in Barangay Alegria after the Alegria voters shall have cast their votes, but when we went there, the Alegria residents protested, saying that they did not want non-barangay voters to vote there. It was difficult to insist because it could have resulted to chaos,” Beltran said in Cebuano.

The situation got heated when the legal team of mayoralty candidate Arleigh Sitoy said they will file a protest if the Gabi voters will be accommodated in Alegria.

It was at this point that Nolasco issued an order to stop the voting to prevent any violence which could erupt, considering that the situation had become emotionally charged.