THE Commission on Elections in Baguio City is hiring individuals to serve as technical support staff who would help operate and maintain the enhanced Vote Counting Machines (VCM) to be used in the coming midterm elections.

During a recent forum at the University of Baguio, City Election Officer John Paul Martin said an initial examination was conducted for applicants.

“We are actually hiring technical support staff wherein the initial applicants underwent an examination last January 25 but unfortunately failed to pass. We will again have a new set of exams on February 1 at our city election office and we hope after the February 1 re-examination for past and future applicants, we can now meet the number of technical support staff for Baguio City,” Martin said.

At least 86 support staff are being eyed by the Comelec. Each will receive an honorarium of P6,000.

“The requirement for this would be an application letter address to me together with two accomplished Personal Data Sheet (PDS) form downloadable either on or webpage or the webpage of the Civil Service Commission. Although information technology students are preferred, applicants should be computer literate and must be in second year college,” Martin added.

Martin also assured enhanced safety features of the VCMs to be used in May as compared to the machines used in previous national elections.

“Before this demo, we were trained at the central office on how to operate these new VCMs and we saw its difference from the VCMs used in 2016. One of the notable differences is the clarity of the vote receipts of the 2019 VCMs. The Voter Verification Paper Audit Trail or voting receipts now shows new safety features through the use of QR codes aside from the machine being faster in processing of results,” Martin pointed out.

The election officer reiterated the importance of VCM demonstrations to the voting public for them to be aware on the process of voting like what was done for the students of University of Baguio.

“Through these forums, the details on how voting will be done on election day can now be relayed to the voting public. And just like here at UB, the attention of the students was very evident and was focused on our explanation since they showed interest on the process of voting using the enhanced VCMs, its capacity, accuracy, and the assurance that this could not be tampered,” Martin added.