The glitches that marred the overseas absentee voting (OAV) in Hong Kong last weekend should serve as a wake-up call for the Commission on Elections to fix the problems at home ahead of the May 10 elections, a poll watchdog said Monday. Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) chairperson Henrietta de Villa said the glitches should also be considered a dry run of sorts for the country’s first nationwide automated polls. "Sana di mangyari [ang] ganyan. Magandang ‘dry run’ ito... [na] ganyan ang nangyari para makita at exhaust-in ang rason (We hope this will not happen at home. What happened should be a dry run of sorts so the Comelec can detect problems and fix them in time for election day here)," de Villa said in an interview on dzXL radio.
Besides, she noted the problems encountered in Hong Kong did not appear to involve the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines themselves, but the climate. De Villa said the theory of contractor Smartmatic-TIM was that the window was left open and the climate caused the ballot to curl. "
Sa kanila di ang makina pumalya, kundi ang klima. It was an accident,
naiwan nang bukas ang bintana (Smartmatic claimed it was not the machines that had a problem but it was because of the weather. It was an accident that the window was left open)," she said. On Sunday, the PCOS machines at the Bayanihan Kennedytown Center in Hong Kong did not immediately accept the ballots from voters at Precincts 15 and 16 shortly after they reopened at 8 a.m. Inspection of the ballots showed no stray and ambiguous marks on the ballots that could result in their rejection by the PCOS machines. At Precinct 16, a replacement machine was brought in after 45 minutes and worked well. But at Precinct 15, the two substitutes did not function, prompting technicians to reinstall the supposedly faulty equipment, which surprisingly operated without problems. Within several hours, balloting in the two precincts went on smoothly.
OAV starts in Syria Meanwhile, the Philippine Embassy in Syria reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs that overseas absentee voting in Damascus started at 8 a.m. Saturday. It said the first voter to cast his ballot is Veronico Salazar, secretary of the Filipino Community of Syria, a very active Filipino organization in Damascus. "A native of Tacloban, Leyte, Mr. Salazar currently works as an IT programmer in Syria. He has been working in Syria for more than eight years. Previously, he had worked in Saudi and Lebanon, and has been an overseas Filipino worker for almost 24 years. Five registered overseas voters cast their ballots on the first day of the voting in Damascus," the DFA said on its website. On the other hand, the DFA cited a report from the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah that
David Dailig, a family driver based in Jeddah, was the first to cast his vote among the 37,083 qualified voters for the 2010 OAV there. Dailig cast his vote at 8 a.m. at the Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEI) Precinct No. 3. The Consulate General established 10 SBEI precincts, with the 10th precinct dedicated to those who registered at field registration outside of Jeddah and at the Philippine curriculum schools. Overseas absentee voting in Jeddah will continue until May 10.
— RSJ, GMANews.TV 
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