In the first district, 463 clustered precincts from the established 2,543 precincts will be put up in 54 barangays, where the 463 PCOS machines will be assigned.
Bucana has the biggest clustered precinct, with three schools making up for the entire voting place. Bucana will be assigned 85 PCOS machines to serve 57,688 registered voters.
Following Comelec’s clustering, a total of 1,172 PCOS machines should serve voters in the 182 Davao City villages.
PCOS machines, Comelec’s Cullo said, are easy to use. He assures voters like Parojinog to just shade the ballot, and then feed it to the machine. “Just follow what other voters are doing,” Cullo said.
“If you are a voter, there is no need for you to be computer literate. Anyway, you wouldn’t be operating the machine. All you have to do is shade the ballot, and feed it into the machine,” Cullo said.
On how fast or slow ballots are shaded, Cullo said, depends on the voters. If they have difficulties, Cullo said, the “BEIs (Board of Election Inspectors) are there to assist voters.”
Three teachers assigned in each clustered precinct will compose the BEI. Each precinct will serve less than a thousand voters. In the previous manual elections, BEIs handle at least 200 voters in a precinct.
Relatives are also allowed to assist but only up to three times, Cullo said.
Pre-printed ballots
Despite Comelec’s assurance, Parojinog’s concerns are legitimate. For her and the 50 million voters nationwide, it would be their first time to see an unfamiliar pre-printed election ballot. It will be quite unlike the manual elections where voters fill up the ballot to cast a vote.
Voters now have to sift through at least 400 names of all candidates and partylist groups printed in smaller fonts on a 14 to 17-inch ballot and to shade the names of the candidates of their choice to signify a vote.