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Despite glitches, voters up 3x in HK on second day of OAV


Despite glitches in at least two of the counting machines, almost 3,000 Filipinos in Hong Kong voted on the second day of the overseas absentee voting (OAV), or almost triple the number of votes cast when the voting started Saturday. “Today [Sunday], 2,901 votes were cast by Filipinos in Hong Kong, or almost three times the number of votes cast yesterday," said Vice Consul Val Roque of the Philippine Consulate General (PCG) in Hong Kong in an e-mail sent to GMANews.TV. The number of voters in Hong Kong when the OAV opened reached only 997 as of 6 p.m. Saturday. The increase was recorded even as problems with the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in two precincts stalled the registering of votes for as long as two hours, according to the election watchdog Kontra Daya. Kontra Daya said the PCOS machines for Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEI) nos. 15 and 16 broke down and rejected ballots, delaying the recording of votes by two hours in SBEI no. 15 and by about 45 minutes in SBEI no. 16. Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, however, earlier said only one PCOS machine malfunctioned and it took an hour to be fixed. Overseas Filipinos are only allowed to vote for president, vice president, 12 senators, and a party-list group. Glitches In a statement Sunday, women’s group Gabriela-Hong Kong, one of the only two accredited groups of poll watchers in the OAV in Hong Kong, said the PCOS machine at SBEI no. 15 rejected the ballots of seven voters at around 8:30 a.m. Two new machines were brought in but only one of the seven rejected ballots were accepted. The first machine was then brought back at around 10:00 a.m. and turned off for about 20 minutes to dry it as it reportedly became damp. The machine started working a little past 10:30, the group said. Meanwhile, the PCOS machine for SBEI no. 16 started rejecting ballots at around 8:30 a.m., but was fixed after 30 minutes. It started accepting ballots at around 9:15, a Gabriela poll watcher stated. “The glitches in the PCOS machines here in HK may be a prelude to the possibilities of problems and disturbances when elections start in the Philippines on May 10. With the sheer number of voters in the Philippines per precinct, one cannot help but fear the possibility of massive disenfranchisement," poll watcher Aaron Ceradoy said. Info drive Despite these technical problems, Roque said the PCG in Hong Kong remains committed to making the OAV in the Chinese special administrative region as efficient as possible. “We worked today for 10 hours, and during this period we attended to roughly 5 voters per minute. My colleagues track these figures as we aim to make the voting center as efficient as possible. An efficient voting center and voting process elicit positive feedback from the voters and encourage other registered Filipinos to take part in our electoral exercise," Roque said. Roque added voter’s education campaigns, which include text blasts of invitation to vote, distribution of sample ballots and a computerized voter and precinct search service, will continue for the remaining 29 days of the OAV. “We have a full voter's education schedule for all the remaining Sundays of the voting period. These will mainly be in parishes and Christian congregations outside Hong Kong Island," he explained. In Singapore meanwhile, voters in the OAV reached only 275 as of 5:30 p.m. Sunday when the voting center closed, a slight increase from the 218 voters who came on Saturday. There are 589,830 registered Filipino absentee voters across the world, with 95,355 in Hong Kong and 31,851 in Singapore. As of 11:20 a.m. Sunday, only a little over 4,000 Filipinos overseas have voted according to the Department of Foreign Affairs. - KBK, GMANews.TV

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