THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) will push through with its mock elections on Saturday, Jan. 19, despite the scheduled shutoff of cellphone signals on that day.

Acting Cebu Provincial Election Supervisor Jerome Brillantes said they consider the disappearance of communication signals on election day as part of the possible worst-case scenarios.

He said the signal shutoff on Saturday will help the election officers (EOs) encounter the possible problems in the transmission of the election results and prepare them on how to go about it.

The mock elections will be held in Barangays Poblacion and Cabutongan in the southernmost town of Santander.

On Saturday, the signal will be down from 3 to 10 a.m. for the seaborne procession.

Affected areas will be the cities of Cebu, Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue. No towns in Cebu will be affected by the signal shutoff.

The signal will once again be shut off from 12 to 8 p.m. for the solemn procession. Downtown and uptown Cebu City will be affected.

Comelec will use the vote counting machine (VCM) in the midterm elections in May and the same device will be used in the mock elections.

Brillantes said the election officers were instructed to let actual voters participate in the mock elections.

“Our target is 100 voters. Before, we only had 10 voters... We also instructed our EOs to get voters who belonged to the precinct,” Brillantes said in Cebuano. (From AZLG of SuperBalita Cebu, KAL)