CEBU CITY, Philippines – The presence of big trees and other obstructions reportedly delayed the transmission process in one barangay of this city while others experienced a quicker vote during the mock elections organized by the Commission in Elections (Comelec) on Saturday, February 13.
"Our goal today is to check the accuracy of the digital count versus the actual votes cast," Cebu City north district election officer Manuel Sarno told reporters before polls opened.
According to Sarno, the new Smartmatic machines are supposed to be at least 7 times faster than the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
Voters were picked at random in 4 barangays where the precincts were set up. Polls opened at 7 am and closed at 12 noon.
According to Carlota Orendain of Barangay Mabolo, the process was easy.
It took her no more than 5 minutes to vote. "Dali ra kaayo ug mas paspas karun kaysa sa una (It's really easy and faster than in previous years)," she said.
Orendain is among the 15 – out of 100 – voters invited to participate in mock polls in Mabolo, which had the lowest voter turnout. In Barangay Lusaran, 95 of 100 voted. Barangay Cabutongan Santander, the southernmost municipality in Cebu, reported a turnout of 190 of 200 voters.
In the Mabolo precinct, only 5 additional ballots were filled out by volunteers and another 5 by members of the media.
The rest of the blank ballots were manually fed through the machines when polls closed.
'Obstructions' in Cabutongan
Cebu provincial election supervisor Lionel Castellano told reporters in a phone patch interview that they had some issues transmitting votes from barangay Cabutongan in Santander to the Comelec's station at the Cebu provincial capital.
"We had to bring it to an area where there weren't so many big trees and obstructions blocking the signal," he said in Cebuano.
This delayed the electronic transmission of votes. Castellano said that they were not able to transmit the votes until around 2:30 pm.
Mabolo and Lusaran had transmitted the electronic count before 1 pm to Comelec's station at Cebu City Hall.
The Mabolo precinct reported 100% accuracy in the manual count vs the digital count of votes, while the manual count of the Lusaran precinct is ongoing.
The mock election comes after a recent fix of system errors where 1-2% of ballots were rejected. (READ: Comelec holds mock elections after glitches)
In both Cebu City precincts, only two ballots were rejected due to over-voting or not completely shading the circle beside the name of their candidate.
After all the electronic counts have been submitted, the final results of the mock national elections will be sent to Smartmatic's warehouse in Santa Rosa, Laguna. – Rappler.com