DAVAO CITY – Four days before the national and local elections, the Board of Election Inspectors ran diagnostic tests for the final testing and sealing of the vote counting machines here on Thursday, May 5.
Lucinda Policarpio, one of the chairmen of the BEIs in Tacunan Elementary School, Barangay Tacunan, Tugbok District here, arrived at the school before 8:00 in the morning for the scheduled FTS.
Two technicians who were trained by the Smartmatic were also present at the Principal’s Office where six vote counting machines are to be tested. Barangay Tacunan has 4,033 registered voters.
The testing, however, were not done at the same time as some of the BEIs were not yet around.
By 10:30 am, Policarpio and her co-members were already printing the election returns of the test ballots. This, she said, is faster compared to their FTS last time.
Policarpio said she remembered well from their two-day training here of “DOC RS” to guide them for the FTS. The acronym stands for diagnostic, open voting, close voting, re-zero and shutdown, which are the processes in operating the VCM.
Slight delays
A few minutes after they started the FTS, BEI chairman Jefferson Bangot ran a re-diagnostic after the test ballot jammed since the machine did not fit the bin.
BALLOT JAM. Jefferson Bangot, chairman of the BEI in a polling precinct in Davao City tries to get the test ballot which jammed inside the vote counting machine. (Zea Io Ming C. Capistrano/davaotoday.com)
The installation of the VCM on top of the plastic bins where the ballots shall be collected was not done during their training said Bangot.
This has also caused the delays experienced in other precincts such as in Mintal Elementary School, where the BEIs ran four diagnostic tests as the test ballots kept jamming due to improper positioning of the VCM atop the bin.
In a polling precinct in Buhangin Elementary School, some BEIs also found it hard to assemble the vote counting machines.
Fe Augusto, a BEI chairman in Buhangin Elementary School lamented that during the training the vote counting machines were already assembled.
Augusto said that because there were several BEIs in the training, they did not have enough time to know how to operate.
“Sa actual, at least natuto mi, compared sa seminar. Mas klaro sa amoa karon sa actual (At least we learned now in the actual (installation of the VCM), compared in the seminar. It is much clearer to us now),” she said.
Florendo Jacinto, principal of the Buhangin Elementary School said some BEIs reported to them that there is a battery that is (burot).
“There are also reports of lacking paraphernalias which were written in the minutes,” he said.
Jacinto added that the problems were “minimal”
“It’s good to have this final testing and sealing because we now have an idea what will happen during the elections, that’s how it’s going to be,” he said.
BEIs ready
Despite the minor glitches during the FTS, the BEIs are optimistic that they are ready for Monday’s polls.
“We are prepared, we are ready and we are expecting that the elections will go smoothly,” said Bangot.
The BEIs also appealed to voters to come early in the elections.
“There are voters who did not look for their assigned precincts prior to the election day and that causes disorder on the day of the elections,” he said.
He said BEIs will be at the polling centers as early as 5:00 am to prepare the polling centers. At 6:00 am, voters will be accepted.
Bangot said the Commission on Elections also assigned a support staff to each clustered precinct to assist the BEIs with the influx of voters.
Davao City has a total of 873,670 registered voters.(With reports from Ace R. Morandante/davaotoday.com)
