Ballot printing stalled on omitted Miriam data

MANILA, Philippines – The printing of ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City was stopped last Monday after the slot for presidential aspirant Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago was found to have omitted her People’s Reform Party, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.

According to Comelec printing committee head Genevieve Guevarra, the printing machines had just started rolling and produced 39 ballots that would be used for the Final Testing and Sealing (FTS) of the vote counting machines (VCMs) when they noticed the discrepancy.

“The printing was immediately stopped. We sent the ballots to the warehouse in (Sta. Rosa) Laguna to regenerate a new ballot face so that the party of Senator Santiago will be included,” Guevarra said.

The Comelec is leasing a warehouse in Sta. Rosa where the VCMs, ballot boxes and other paraphernalia are being kept. It is also in this property where the VCMs are tested and configured.

Guevarra said they are expecting the new ballot face to come from Laguna either last night or today so they could immediately start printing the 55.6 million official ballots that will be used in the May 9 elections.

As of press time, the NPO is printing some 750,000 demo ballots which contain the names of foreign artists like Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift as presidential candidates.

“When the new ballot face arrives, we will start printing the (official) ballots for the overseas absentee voting (OAV),” she said. As a policy, the ballots for OAV will be shipped first.

Guevarra added they are confident that while their buffer has been reduced, they could still finish printing all of the ballots by April 25 as targetted.

The Comelec kicked off the ballot printing only on Feb. 15 after three postponements - from the original schedule in Jan. 26, then Feb. 1 , Feb. 8 and then Feb. 15.

Earlier, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said they could meet the April 25 timeline because they are printing ballots that are significantly shorter than in the 2010 elections, or 20x8.5 inches from 27x8.5 inches, respectively.

Bautista attributed this to the fewer candidates this year.

In 2010, there were 10 candidates for president, and eight for vice president. But for the May 9 polls, there are six bets each for president and vice president.

There are 50 candidates now for senator and 61 in 2010. The participants in the party-list system is also down from 187 to 115.

Aside from this, the NPO is also using three modern OCE Cannon Digial Printers that are capable of maximizing the available spaces on the ballots.

Comelec sources, however, revealed that Santiago’s party was unintentionally edited out as a result of the shortening of ballots.

Aside from the 55.6 million official ballots, Comelec is also printing some 1.2 million testing and demo ballots and other election paraphernalia.

Campaign posters

Candidates have until this week to remove their campaign posters in places not designated by the Comelec as common poster areas before the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) starts tearing them down next week.

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson yesterday said, “We told our directors to give the candidates and their supporters a few days to remove their posters because by next week we would start removing them.”

He warned the erring candidates that if by next week they would still see some misplaced election paraphernalia, they would take pictures of these campaign materials before taking them down.

They would submit a report to the Comelec to enable the poll body to decide if legal action should be taken against the candidate.

Under the memorandum of agreement (MOA) for “Oplan Baklas” signed by the DPWH with Comelec and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, the MMDA will conduct the clearing operations of illegally posted campaign paraphernalia in Metro Manila, while the DPWH’s area is outside of Metro Manila.

Singson said that each of their 176 districts has allocated teams made up of maintenance crew to remove the campaign paraphernalia found along national roads.

Singson said that they also sought the assistance of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to remove illegally placed campaign paraphernalia in remote areas nationwide.

He also said that while there are designated common poster areas, he admitted there are locations when the space provided is very small.

In these instances, Singson advised the candidates to talk to owners of residential homes or establishments if they would allow campaign posters.

With the election period in full swing, Singson also complained that some politicians are hampering the completion of infrastructure projects if their preferred sub-contractor would not be hired.

Singson said in the media forum Kapihan sa Manila Bay that some politicians, probably in their quest for campaign funds, would meddle to ensure that their preferred contractors would be given government projects.

The DPWH is eyeing an unprecedented target to have 60 to 70 percent of their 14,000 planned projects for year 2016 to be awarded before the start of the March 25 election ban. They allocated almost P400 billion to finance the 14,000 projects.

“This is the reason why I would often conduct visits to check if there are any hitches. In most cases, what is holding back the awardees are the road right of way (RROW) issue and the contractor experience difficulty in getting aggregate or rocks,” said Singson.

“If the mayor or the governor does not like the winning bidder, the bidder would not immediately be issued with a construction permit and this is where the project gets stalled,” he added.

He said that there are local officials who ask commissions from contactors.

Partisan cops

PNP chief Director General Ricardo Marquez warned policemen yesterday that police personnel found guilty of partisan political activities would be dismissed from the service.

Marquez and Chief Superintendent Miguel Antonio, Western Mindanao police director, were in Zamboanga City to assess security preparations for the coming elections.

“If the investigation says they are to be dismissed I will dismiss them if there are grounds for dismissal,” Marquez said.

Marquez said to ensure that police officers stay apolitical the PNP would replace commanders who have served their two-year tour of duty.

He also implemented the limited rotation of personnel who have relatives running for elective positions.

Marquez said he was moving around the country to check how PNP units were progressing in their preparation for the elections.

He said part they would assess how the PNP, AFP, Comelec and other government agencies could ensure honest, peaceful and orderly elections.

Marquez said additional police forces might be deployed in areas with increasing election-related incidents and presence of private armed groups or intense partisan rivalry.

Meanwhile, an election watchdog has raised concern that the VCMs are not reliable as shown during the recently held mock polls.

“Without a genuine source code review to really check if accurate counting instructions are being implemented by vote counting machines, coupled with proper hash code verification to ensure that the correct program is installed, we expect more discrepancies in vote counts during election day,” said Rick Bahague, convenor of Kontra Daya.

The group cited the case of mock elections held in a school in Aklan.

Mock polls in the Kalibo Pilot Elementary School in Aklan province last Feb. 13 showed discrepancies in vote counts ranging from one to three votes for certain candidates in almost all positions, said Bahague.

During the first manual counting and tallying of votes cast in Aklan, 20 votes were found to be miscounted.

Kontra Daya monitored 11 rejected ballots and 1 misread ballot out of 66 voters in Kalibo Pilot Elementary School. This translates to 18 percent of total votes cast that were not counted.

“Rejected and misread ballots by VCMs are tantamount to voter disenfranchisement and a violation of our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote,” said Bahague.

He warned that a high error rate is alarming and “may affect the outcome in a close race.” - With Evelyn Macairan, Rhodina Villanueva, Roel Pareño