Transmission delays in Davao

(Photo by Juliet Revita)
(Photo by Juliet Revita)

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Davao City reported there was a delay in the transmission of election returns from three voting centers in the first district.

Comelec Davao chair of the City Board of Canvassers lawyer Krisna Samantha said there was a delay in the transmission of election returns from Bolton Elementary School, Davao City National High School, and Cesareo Villa-Abrille Elementary School.

At around 5 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, Samantha said two of the schools have already transmitted the results -- Bolton Elementary School and Cesareo Villa-Abrille Elementary School. As of 6:17 p.m. same day, only Davao City National High School has not yet transmitted its results.

Comelec said the delay was due to a malfunctioned SD card.

Bolton Elementary School election officer Alejandro Coray told SunStar Davao they had difficulty in transmitting the election results after one SD card of the vote counting machine (VCM) malfunctioned.

“Pero kahit na nag-malfunction ang SD, wala siya nakaapekto sa casting of votes kay ni-proceed mi sa manual. Kana lang, di pa ma-feed ang mga balota (Even if the SD card malfunctioned, it did not affect the casting of votes because we did it manually. The only problem is that we cannot feed the ballots yet),” he said.

The officer said the SD cards were functioning during the seal and testing but technical glitches cannot be prevented.

Coray also said only one out of nine voter registration verification machines (VRVM) functioned during the election day.

However, he said it did not affect the electoral proceedings, since the machine was still in its pilot testing stage.

Coray said they did not have a similar problem during the 2016 presidential elections.

“Unta the Comelec could work it out, so that dili ni mausab nga scenario (I hope the Comelec could work it out, so that it will never happen again),” he said.

Because of the delay of transmission, they were not able to proclaim the winners of the first district. However, Comelec was able to proclaim the newly-elected officials in the second and third district.

“We will try our best na matapos kasi magiging immaterial narin yong lalabas na boto pag hindi niya tinransmit so we will do the contingency procedures kung ano man yun, it depends upon the party kung merong mag momotion,” Caballero said.

Some heads of the polling centers likewise went to the Sangguniang Panglungsod Tuesday to update the election result after the results were not transmitted.

Caballero said when the electoral board transmits the election returns, it has three destinations - central server, transparency server, and the other one will be for the City Board of Canvassers (CBOC) which contains the partial, unofficial vote counts only.

Because of the traffic of data entering the server, some were not transmitted so they were requested to be in Sangguniang Panglungsod to upload the results in the CBOC.

“What we did is the contingency procedure pina-upload natin sa kanya manually mas napadali ang trabaho natin,” Caballero said.

This year’s election is the fourth time that the country had automated polls nationwide. Automated election was done in 2010, 2013 mid-term elections, and 2016 presidential election.

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