Technical glitches mar mock polls

MANILA, Philippines — Election watchdog Kontra Daya yesterday expressed concern over the technical glitches and other problems that occurred during the conduct of mock polls by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

“As early as 6:10 a.m., there was an error in the transmission diagnostics and it was not until the fourth attempt that the transmission became successful. There was a need to troubleshoot the LAN cable and the modem also had to be reset,” Kontra Daya said in a statement.

Despite the glitches, the Comelec declared the mock polls successful, saying 59 of 60 implementation areas were able to transmit results within 30 minutes of the close of voting.

Kontra Daya said that the LAN troubleshooting and modem resetting were required to ensure electronic transmission of election results.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez admitted that signal difficulties occurred in one precinct, preventing electronic transmission.

Jimenez said contingency measures were immediately undertaken.

A similar problem occurred during the pilot-test of the voter registration verification machine (VRVM), according to the poll watchdog.

“While the VRVM was able to find the voter’s record – full name, address, gender, precinct number and serial ID – a problem occurred in the printing of the receipt of the voters registration due to Bluetooth connection problem between the VRVM and the printer,” Kontra Daya said.

Jimenez said the pilot-testing of VRVM was also successful as it generated valuable insights that could help in the actual implementation on the day of the May elections.

The poll watchdog said an armed personnel stepped inside the polling precinct and took pictures using his phone.

“The armed personnel stayed for about a minute and immediately left after taking pictures,” Kontra Daya said.

It said the presence of any armed individual in a polling precinct is a violation of election rules.

The group said voter turnout during the mock polls was low, with only eight percent of the invited 1,000 voters coming.

“As it is right now, there is an option for manual retrieval of voter records and it remains to be seen if the current records can be trusted, given past anecdotal evidence of the dead being still part of the voters’ list in some precincts,” Kontra Daya said.