LAOAG CITY—Except for some minor glitches--at least two vote counting machines that did not scan the sample ballots-- the final testing and sealing (FTS) of vote counting machines in Ilocos Norte went smoothly on Friday.
The FTS involves the end-to-end test of the process, from the initialization of the machines, to the voting of 10 people, to the feeding of the filled-up ballots to the VCMs, and until the printing of election returns (ERs).
In Laoag, some election volunteers and village workers joined the FTS in various precincts.
While monitoring the FTS at the Laoag Central School at 10 a.m., lawyer Joel Gines, provincial election officer of Ilocos Norte, said the defective VCMs will be replaced immediately by authorized technical support staff of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
“The defective machine is not much of an issue as we have contingency machines which are now prepositioned in the 21 towns and two cities of Ilocos Norte,” Gines said in an interview.
Based on the directive of the Comelec central office, Gines added that they have recalled the new election marking pens because the ink does not dry up easily.
“For now, we will use of the old ones or those issued in 2010 and 2016 elections because the new pens have blots,” Gines said, assuring the marking pens will be replaced before the Monday's polls.
During the previous elections, the Comelec reported some glitches in the 77,829 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, including manual counts not matching the machine-generated results, while some machines did not function at all. (PNA)
