Mock polls at Senate prove insufficiency of voting time — watchdog

An election watchdog on Thursday said the mock polls held at the Senate proved that there would not be enough time to accommodate all the voters on election day. In an interview with GMANews.TV, Ferdinand Gaite of multi-sectoral poll watchdog Kontra Daya said that 11 hours would not be enough time to accommodate the 1,000 voters expected to turn up in every clustered precinct. He said that only an average of 60 voters per hour turned up during the Senate mock elections. Using this number, he said that only 660 voters will be able to vote on election day because voting will begin at 7 a.m. and will end at 6 p.m.

And even if the Commission on Elections (Comelec) still accommodates those in line after 6 p.m., he said the poll body would still need at least four hours to serve all the 1,000 voters expected to turn up. The poll body expects 50,723,734 voters to flock to 76,340 clustered precincts nationwide on May 10. Gaite likewise noted that the mock elections held at the Senate did not use genuine ballots, which probably made the process "faster" than it was supposed to be. "If you were a real voter, you would take your time," he said. He said that based on his observation, a voter usually took about 25 minutes to vote, if one were to include his wait in line coming into the precinct. However, he said that feeding the ballot into the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine takes only about 45 seconds. He then suggested that the Comelec should increase the number of Board of Election Inspectors in every precinct to speed up the process. Each clustered precinct will have three BEIs. Earlier, a computer simulation study conducted by UP Prof. Giovanni Tapang of Kontra Daya also said that 11 hours would not be enough to let 1,000 voters vote. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez, however, said that it would be "unfair" to expect that the voting flow of people would be consistent. "To say that there is an expectation, that would not be accurate," he said in an interview. On the other hand, poll body chairman Jose Melo and his fellow commissioners said the Senate mock polls only proved that the May polls would be successful. "Our confidence is going up and soaring... it's all go and we better forget any talk concerning failure of elections," he said in a separate briefing. The canvassing and evaluation of the Senate mock polls is ongoing as of posting time. Gaite is the head of the Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage). — RSJ/LBG, GMANews.TV