NEGROS Occidental Provincial Commission on Elections (Comelec) supervisor lawyer Salud Milagros Villanueva said there were 31 cases of defective Secure Digital or SD cards found during the conduct of the national and local elections in the province.
Villanueva serves as the chairman of the Provincial Board of Canvassers.
The venue of the canvassing was at the Social Hall of the Provincial Capitol building.
She said, “Since our Regional Technical hub is in Iloilo, we waited for their instruction if it is okay already to dispatch our people there to get the SD cards. They will batch feed all the ballots in that precincts so that they could get the results for that particular precinct. So, since I said that we have 31 confirmed cases of defective SD cards, there were three SD cards which were already replaced and were already running. Only 27 SD cards are on the process of replacement as of 4 PM on May 13,” she said.
These SD cards were defective and not corrupted. This means that its defects were from the hardware itself which needs to be replaced so that it can store data again.
The result of the election in every ballot is being stored at the SD card.
Everytime a ballot is cast, it will issue a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) or the receipt that contains that list of candidates being voted upon by a voter.
Zero election-related violence
There was no recorded election-related violence during the conduct of the national and local elections. Only two confirmed cases of vote-buying happened in E.B. Magalona and Moises Padilla. And based on reports forwarded to them, cases were already filed formally, she said.
This would depend on the Law Department of Comelec how they would act on it whether they will proceed with the investigation.
The Provincial Board of Canvassers have already convened as of 3 PM, May 13 and did the initialization of the Consolidation of Canvassing System (CCS) which turned successful.
Atty. Villanueva was joined by her Vice Chairman Rene Caro, Dr. Portia Mallorca, member Secretary, Jose Leo Redoblo, CCS operator during the opening of the CCS materials and during the initialization.
The initialization was witnessed by lawyer representatives of national candidates.
The Provincial Board of Canvassers took a recess as of 4:15 PM and resumed by 8 p.m. as of May 13, 2019.
Villanueva said that with the opening of the CCS, they were already connected to the server in Manila and once a result will arrive from a certain town or city, so it can already be seen.
“We are just waiting for the results to enter our system from the towns and cities. For those areas that have no problem are expected to transmit their result tonight or on May 14,” she said.
“The proclamation will be done after the consolidation of results before they print the Certificate of Canvass and Proclamation because No. 1, we cannot do a shortcut in the system even in the printing of reports. We do this step by step and we cannot print if there is still lacking,” she said.