Defective Flashcards Cause Dilatory Delivery Of Vote Results

May 12,2010
Defective Flashcards Cause Dilatory Delivery Of Vote Results
By Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr.

Maasin City, Southern Leyte-Nine municipalities and one city in this province have not yet sent their respective voting results for the national and provincial candidates since the evening of May 11, 2010 until today May 12, 2010 afternoon.
This was the information gathered by the LSDE at the Provincial Board Of Canvassers who hold temporary office at the new Legislative Building at the provincial capitol site.
Asked why, Elvira Lagusan Monge, Election Officer 2 of COMELEC provincial office disclosed that the delay in sending vote results from the 10 areas were mainly caused by defective flashcards that brokedown during the casting of ballots.
The 9 municipalities and one city that have failed to transmit their voting results include Macrohon, Limasawa Island, Malitbog, Tomas Oppus, Sogod, Liloan, San Francisco, St.Bernard, Hinunangan and Maasin City.
The other 9 municipalities that have already transmitted their respective voting results were Padre Burgos, Bontoc, Libagon, Pintuyan, San Ricardo, San Juan, Anahawan, Hinundayan, and Silago.
Monge said that COMELEC has already sent communication to Smartmatic regarding the 10 defective flashcards for replacement. However, as of this writing, Smartmatic did not give a definite date when to deliver the 10 flashcards needed to count the remaining ballots from the abovementioned places, she said.
On the other hand, of Maasin’s 70 barangays, there are still 2 barangays of Maria Clara and Pansaan that have not yet sent its voting results due to the defective flashcards.
City Election Officer 2 Lawrence Irman Gelsano said that replacements of defective flashcards for Southern Leyte would be delivered to Tacloban City where a COMELEC officer here could get it. Although, he said, they were not informed on the definite date of its arrival.
Gelsano said he is hopeful that the new flashcards will arrived as soon as possible since they were already tired of waiting for the replacement so that the remaining ballot could be counted.
For his part, an IT member of the Provincial Board of Canvassers when asked about the results of votes from those they have received explained that they cannot yet do the consolidation of the total votes of the entire province. “WE cannot yet give the total results since we cannot do the consolidation without the other results from other places. WE have just to wait until the rest of the votes will be sent to us”. he said.
The IT officer, who does not want to be named, further said that without the defective flashcards(memory chips use in the Precinct Count Optical Scan(PCOS) machines in the first automation poll of May 10,2010 national elections), the total result of votes from the different areas of the province could be completed in less than 48 hours.
AT the Maasin Central School here, where this correspondent was listed, there was a clustering of some of barangay Abgao’s precincts. There was a long line of voters who from time to time have grumbled since they were there since 7:00 a.m. for three hours and they were not yet able to cast their ballots at past 10:00.am.The PCOS machine assigned to us in particular has to accommodate a cluster of 7 precincts with less than 700 hundred voters. Other PCOS machines have to service 5 or 6 clustered precincts. Lack of proper management in the handling of queuing voters has caused a long delay in casting the ballots.
The PCOS machine assigned to us has also suffered from light glitches causing a temporary disruption of the operation, but a young IT Smartmatic representative technician was able to fix. In every school there was only one technician assigned to handle several PCOS machines in case of technical problem.
Unofficial incomplete results for Maasin City only: 1)Re-electionist Maasin Mayor Maloney Samaco-26,088
Votes; rival mayoralty candidate, Rosette Yñiguez-Lerias-13,510 votes. 2) Unopposed Vice-Mayor Re-electionist Maria Effie Abiera-28,557 votes.
Unofficial incomplete result for Sangguniang Panglunsod of Maasin City: 1)Margarita Bantug-20,488 votes; 2)Rafael Cromwell Gerong-20,451 votes; 3)Reynaldo Hatayna-19,383; 4)Vivencio Costillas-19,113; 5)Ricky Montalbo-18,691; 6)Alejandro Rojas-18,466; 7)Romeo Geniston-17,709; 8)Geronimo Mercado-17,607; 9)Nestor Sy,Sr.-17,311; 10)Antonio Cardoza-15,222. (Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr.)