COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) regional director Jose Nick Mendros has called on voters to try casting their votes in the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine demonstration booth outside their regional office to familiarize themselves in the automated election voting process.
Mendros explained that only a single ballot is given per voter with no replacements when each ballot is spoiled by the voter due to tearing, ambiguous markings, and over shading.
"There will be no more replacement of ballots once it is given out to a voter that is why we are urging them to have prepared lists when they go to voting centers so that they don't commit mistakes," Mendros said.
The Comelec official assured that each ballot has undergone rigorous quality control during the printing with the National Printing Office.
"Each ballot is scanned in the PCOS machine to make sure that it can be read by the machine. The machine is also programmed not to read ballots that do not belong to the polling precinct," he said.
In their PCOS demonstrations, the regional director reported that ballots with ambiguous markings such as dots, lines and under shaded ballots are the most common mistakes made by voters.
When such markings are read by the PCOS machines, a warning message will appear prompting the Board of Election Inspector to tell the voters to re-shade ovals fully in their ballots so that it will be read by the machine, he said.
Comelec-issued marker pens should be used by voters as he stressed ballpens most especially blue ballpens have registered to be ambiguous markings in the PCOS machines.
He also advised against over voting of ballots in sections for councilors and senators as he said shading more than the 12 required ovals would invalidate all votes casted in a particular section. Votes less than what is required, meanwhile, will be counted.
"If you shade in the senator section 13 or more, the machines would not know your priority resulting to your vote in that specific section to be invalidated," he said.
He encouraged voters to experience voting with PCOS machines in their demonstration booth will be ongoing until the end of April.