UPDATE 3 AS OF 9:30 PM, May 13, 2013
The polls closed at 7:00 o’clock this evening, but the work of the
electoral process is far from over. NAMFREL is currently awaiting Election
Returns and the initial validation of the results. In the meantime, NAMFREL is
compiling and validating reports regarding the efficiency and cleanliness of
today’s voting. The main issues and concerns observed are summarized below.
Technical Issues - The COMELEC projected that, out of 78,000 PCOS machines country-wide,
300 would encounter problems; this would place the percentage of problems expected
at nearly 0.4%. Cagayan de Oro City, however, experienced a much higher
percentage of technical problems (paper jams, LCD malfunctions, power supply
problems, memory card failure, and other glitches) than what was projected by
the COMELEC. The breakdown on the performance of the PCOS machines deployed in
CDO can be seen below:
PCOS machines that encountered technical
problems – 26/360 (7.2%)
PCOS machines with unresolved
problems – 9/360 (2.5%)
In light of unresolved technical problems, the following voting enters
conducted manual voting for specific precincts:
- West City Central School (Precincts #0341A/B, #0328A/B/C, #0337A/B/C)
- Kauswagan Central School (Precinct #s unknown)
- Bongbongon Elemetary School (Precincts #0541A/B/C, #0543A/B, #0540A/B)
- Lumbia Elementary School (Precinct #s unknown)
In response to these failures, the City COMELEC issued its contingency
plan and instructed the BEIs that the uncounted ballots should stay within
their specific precincts and would be counted using another PCOS machine. Only
the memory card allotted for that specific precinct will be used in recording
the cast ballots. No manual counting will be done.
In Misamis Oriental, based on the reports that received by NAMFREL, only
six machines have been recorded to have encountered technical problems.
Non-Technical Issues - Aside from technical problems, electoral anomalies and violations of
guidelines for BEIs were also reported.
Two cases of electoral anomalies occurred in Lumbia Elementary School.
In both instances, persons who offered to “assist” senior citizen voters allegedly
shaded said voters’ ballot in favor of a certain candidate that was not the
voters’ choice and without their consent. (The two instances involved separate persons
and senior citizen voters.)
In Bulua National High school, voter, Napthalie Tirol complained that
someone else had earlier voted under her name, as evidenced by a signature
beside her name. Tirol produced IDs to prove her identity. The BEI allowed her
to cast another ballot, since she was not marked with indelible ink. Another
report on a similar case was also collected from Lumbia Elementary School. The
voter, facilitated by NAMFREL, approached the designated COMELEC school head
and this was recorded for investigation by the COMELEC.
In Macanhan Elementary school, a voter was reported to have taken a
picture of her ballot, which is prohibited by the COMELEC, and had posted this
on the social networking site. The voter and the BEI in charge adamantly denied
that this actually took place despite the evidence online.
Four teams have been deployed in the two districts of Cagayan de Oro and
two districts of Misamis Oriental for the Random Manual Audit Monitoring
(RMAM). They conducted the random manual audit in Bulua Elementary School, City
Central School, Balingoan Central School and Libertad Central School. The updates
from the team in Balingoan state that they cannot proceed with the manual
auditing since some of the machines are experiencing a bog down in the
transmission of election results.
Ongoing NAMFREL Operations – As of the time of this writing, NAMFREL
is currently awaiting the arrival of the Election Returns (ERs) for
verification. The hard copy of ERs from the local precincts will be compared
and verified against the official transmission to the COMELEC national office.
Hourly updates regarding the ERs will begin at 11 PM tonight, May 13, 2013. ###
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