Comelec: Absentee voting in HK, Singapore going well

(Updated 1:30 p.m.) Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) for Filipinos in Hong Kong and Singapore started without any glitches around 8 a.m. (Manila time) Saturday and was going smoothly, even as voters continue to arrive at designated posts, a Commission on Elections commissioner said. “The [PCOS] machines have already been opened. [The voting process] is [already] starting," Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said in an interview on radio dzBB. Larrazabal is in Hong Kong, which has 95,355 Filipino absentee voters to oversee the first day of the OAV. Singapore, on the other hand, has 31,851 voters. “It’s all systems go here, and we are excited," Larrazabal said, adding that the members of the Filipino committee and consulate officials in Hong Kong are assisting voters, who he said have started arriving at the Philippine consulate office there to cast their votes. Larrazabal also assured that elections officials were equipped with UV lamps to be used to authenticate the ballots. “All teachers and volunteers have UV lamps. When we came here to train the officials, mayroon nang UV lamps dito sa Hong Kong. Kumpleto na definitely," the commissioner said. Hong Kong Reporting from the Bayanihan Kennedy Town Center (BKTC) in Hong Kong, GMA reporter Chino Gaston said the overseas voting was smooth-sailing, with OFWs breezing through what they described as a "fun and simple" automated process. The first Filipino to cast her vote was Rowena de la Cruz, who completed in only a minute and a half the entire process of accomplishing her ballot, feeding it to the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine, and getting an indelible ink on her finger. Moreover, Gaston said it did not take other OFWs more than three minutes to cast their votes. The voters already had preferred candidates' list, which helped speed up the voting process. While the PCOS machines had a glitch-free run, voting at the BKTC was still not spared from the usual problem of missing names on the voters' list. At least two overseas Filipino workers, including Mark Vincent who had been successful in voting in the last two elections, failed to cast their votes because their names were not on Comelec's list of registered voters in the island state. The consulate in Hong Kong had already asked the two OFWs to just await further announcements on how they could cast their votes. Another problem Philippine authorities had to deal at the start of the voting process at BKTC was the tension created by a group of supporters of senatorial bets Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza. A commotion erupted when authorities warded off the supporters of the two Nacionalista Party bets who had plastered campaign posters at the entrance of the BKTC – an act prohibited under the Omnibus Election Code. As a remedy, authorities advised the supporters to stay outside of the 30-meter radius around the voting center. All smiles Singapore was also a picture of a smooth-sailing OAV for Filipino workers there. Despite a brief drizzle in the island state, "excited" Filipino voters still went out of their houses to cast their votes, according to former GMA News reporter Marvin Tomandao, reporting from Singapore. As early as 5:00 a.m., some voters trooped to the Philippine Embassy there, which serves as the voting center. In the first few hours after the embassy opened, around 50 OFWs had already cast their votes. Tomandao quoted embassy officials as saying they are expecting a higher voter turnout this year compared to the last presidential election in 2004, where 80 percent of the 23,000 registered voters in Singapore were able to vote. Lydia Deligente, the first Filipino in Singapore to take part in the 2010 automated OAV, was "all smiles" after she cast her votes, saying it was a lot easier than when she did it manually in the 2004 elections. Counting In the radio dzBB interview, Larrazabal said that automated counting will only be done at the end of the voting period on May 10, the scheduled start of the automated elections here in the Philippines. “All election data will be sent electronically on May 10. There will be no daily counting. The election returns will be generated only then, and canvassing will be done in Manila," Larrazabal said. Earlier, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting chair Henrietta de Villa expressed confidence that the overseas absentee voting would proceed smoothly. PPCRV is the accredited citizen arm of the Comelec. [See: HK, Singapore all set for start of 31 days automated OAV] Meanwhile, radio dzBB cited Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, chair of the department’s absentee voting committee, as saying that they are expecting a high voter turnout on Sunday, as most of the OFWs are on day-off from work. — with Mark Merueñas/LBG, GMANews.TV