Poll machines pass field tests but election inspectors confused in Makati

After ballots were misread by some election machines during last Monday’s field tests in several Metro Manila areas, the re-testing of machines undertaken last Thursday went well, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said. However, questions regarding the ability of Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) — generally public school teachers — to handle automated elections emerged, prompting a local Comelec official to consider retraining them. “So far, the situation has been very good. The precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines functioned accurately," said Michael Dioneda, director of Comelec-National Capital Region, in a phone interview. Dioneda said this development “boosted the morale of our field officers and Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs)." “We believe [that with today's accurate results], the PCOS would produce reliable results on May 10," he said. Re-testing was being undertaken in Parañaque, Makati, and Marikina cities as of posting time, but Dioneda did not identify the exact precincts where these were being done.

BEIs not trained properly Despite machines’ successful operation, it was observed that some members of the BEI were not properly trained to handle automated elections. This came to light when two ballots with overvotes were marked spoiled by the poll inspectors. Lawyer Juliet Villar of the Comelec-NCR office said the BEIs marked the ballots as spoiled for having votes for two presidential candidates, which she said was wrong. “Bakit mo ire-reject? Paano naman ‘yong ibang posisyon na hindi affected by the overvoting? Iyong mga posisyon na may overvote, iyon lang ang huwag ibilang. Paulit-ulit po naming sinabi iyan. Kahit mga watchers natin alam nila," Villar said. (Why would they reject those ballots? Only the position with an overvote should not be counted. That’s what we’ve been telling them. Even the watchers know that.) Myrna Cabangongan, member of the BEI in the affected precinct, insisted that they followed the procedures correctly. “May procedures sa machine, we were just following. Pero okay naman na in the end (We were just following the procedures. But in the end everything turned out well)." Villar said they might retrain the BEIs on Saturday. She said what happened in Makati was an “isolated case" since it did not happen in other precincts. “Isolated case lang ito. Medyo nalito lang siguro sila. Intindihin na rin natin sila, napapaligiran sila ng watchers, tanong dito, tanong doon..Mayroon pang time i-train ulit," Villar said. (That was just an isolated case. Perhaps the BEIs just got confused considering the questions they were getting from the poll watchers. There is still time to train them again.) The re-testing of the PCOS machines started at 10 a.m. using the re-configured CF cards from Smartmatic, which were delivered Thursday morning at the Makati High School. - KBK, RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV