Only less than four percent of poll results have yet to be transmitted

Only less than four percent of election results from precincts all across the Philippines have yet to be transmitted, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said on Wednesday. The results, which represent less than 1.5 million voters, were not immediately transmitted to the Comelec’s main servers in Manila, among other recipients, because of issues with transmission hardware, a poll official said. The Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in these areas are still waiting for replacements of either malfunctioning precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines (equipment used to count and transmit votes) or defective compact flash cards (which contain instructions for PCOS machines to read ballots). "Imbis na nagtransmit, naghihintay pa ng replacement... nagkakaroon ng delay (Instead of transmitting, the Board of Election Inspectors are still waiting for replacements and that causes a delay)," Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez told reporters on Wednesday. Adding to the delay was the refusal of some BEIs to manually count the votes after having discovered that the machines or their CF cards were malfunctioning, Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores said. Smartmatic-TIM was chosen as the Comelec’s poll machine supplier. Teachers usually opted to keep the ballots inside the ballot box until the replacement PCOS units or CF cards arrived, Flores said. "It shows that the teachers really embrace automation, they don't want to go manual again," he told GMA News. As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, the Comelec has received 96.31 percent of the election returns from the 76,347 clustered precincts nationwide, Jimenez said. "That represents less than 1.5 million voters... malamang tapos na yan (but that's probably over by now)," he told reporters in an interview. However, he could not immediately identify the areas where these results have yet to be transmitted. The Comelec, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), will consolidate the votes and declare the winners both for the senatorial and the party-list races. On the other hand, Congress, also sitting as the NBOC, will proclaim the president and vice president. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV