Isabela town also deals with defective PCOS machines

CAUAYAN, Isabela—With roughly two hours left before the period of voting ends, defective poll machines in at least three clustered precincts here have yet to be repaired. Teachers who served as board of election inspectors (BEIs) said they informed Smartmatic officials about the problem as early as 7 a.m. but as of posting time the malfunctioning Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines have yet to be acted upon. Smartmatic, a private firm, is the technology provider for the country’s first nationwide automated elections. Although casting of votes has not been postponed, some BEIs feared that a lot of ballots, which were dropped manually inside ballot boxes, would be rejected when the machines start working due to their sensitivity to elements. “May fears na baka hindi na mabilang yung balota kasi sensitive yan dahil na fo-fold na yung iba (There are fears that some of the ballots might not be counted because some of them were no longer in mint condition)," said Marissa Angeles, a member of BEI. Angeles said an official from the Smartmatic official could not pinpoint the specific cause why the machines malfunctioned. She said they were blaming the hot weather and the possibility of lack of electricity supply for the glitches. Ann Balmaceda, Smartmatic’s PCOS supervisor, said they do not have available PCOS machines to replace the problematic ones, but they could borrow other units from nearby precincts once the voting is officially closed. Twelve PCOS units have been distributed to Cauayan South Central School. Two of these machines malfunctioned for about two hours earlier after BEIs failed to remove the back-up memory cards inserted in them. Voter Alejandro Gangmed, meanwhile, was disappointed with the glitches. He said he woke up early to be able to experience the first automated elections but was dismayed to find out that the machines were defective. “Nakakawala ng gana (I lost my interest)," he said. —KBK, GMANews.TV