But the CCS laptop operator said the back-up card was found out to have the same problem with the primary memory card.
“If a back-up system is like a spare tire, then with what you said, it does not make any sense to call it a spare one at all,” the lawyer told the CCS operator.
The CCS laptop operator told Delgra to better direct his question to Smartmatic, the technology provider for the country’s first automated election system.
City Board of Canvassers Chair Danilo Cullo who presided the canvassing however announced that Comelec regional director Ray Sumalipao had just said there was no need anymore to transmit the flash card to Digos because the IT person can just send the password.
With Sumalipao’s word, the issue was put to rest and the proposal for a two-hour break, called off.
A brief recess was then declared.
Cullo said the winning candidates could have gone ahead with the proclamation because the uncounted results are already “very negligible,” he told the media during the break. He said Comelec officers in the region were amenable to the early proclamation.
He said the region earlier filed a petition before the Commission en banc in Manila to allow them to proclaim winners even if the canvassing has not yet been one hundred percent completed.
A teacher inserts what they believe is a defective compact flashcard into a PCOS machine at the canvassing area. (davaotoday.com photo by Jose Hernani)
Cullo said Director Sumalipao had told him that the Comelec Commissioners already approved the petition in principle but that they still had to wait in the evening.
“We are confident though that we can do the proclamation tonight,” he told the media.
But the rule says that the city canvassers could not do so until the canvassing is one hundred percent completed.
Tapak is a far flung barangay which requires a total five hours travel time, including two hours by horse, because there are roads that are not passable by vehicles.
The status of the transmission of results from the two polling clusters in Labo and Butay was not yet known.
There was also a problem with one of the flash cards coming from polling areas in Biao, Guianga in Tugbok District. Cullo said one of them was switched with a flashcard coming from a polling cluster in Digos.
The progress of canvassing had reached 99.40 per cent when the City Board of Canvassers decided to stop at around 11 in the evening.
