Comelec exec allays fear of ‘failure of election’
SAPIAN, Capiz – A Comelec official has dispelled fears of failure of election on May 10 as painted by the opposition groups.
Lawyer Ferdinand Rafanan of Comelec Law Department assured that there will be no failure of election. He said that the poll automation has been done in several elections in Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) for the past several years and it turned out successful.
“This is not the first time the Comelec conducted the poll automation since we already done it for several elections in ARMM,” Rafanan said, adding that the system in poll automation is similar with the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), NSAT, and board examinations as well as the bets and results of lotto.
According to him, the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines will undergo eight testings before the election to ensure its functionality.
Rafanan was here last Sunday at the residence of Mayor Arturo “Turic” Orosco, Sr. and First Lady Evangeline Oñas Orosco to conduct voter’s education among voters and political leaders.
He said that the 82,200 PCOS machines are brown-out free since there are batteries in which power could last for 16 hours. It will be delivered in specific precincts with specific ballots.
There are 50,723,734 voters in the Philippines with 80 provinces and 1,631 cities and towns.
There are also 320,415 precincts however it reduced into 76,340 clustered precincts in which there will be 1,000 voters per precinct instead of 200 voters.
Rafanan added, there are reservel 5,860 PCOS machines that will be used to replace in case there are defective ones.
He added that 57,000 Information Technology (IT) personnel will be deployed all over the Philippines who are trained by Smartmatic to man the PCOS machine in every polling precinct.
However, the Comelec lawyer urged everyone to still be vigilant on the May 10 election as the candidates could break the PCOS machines.
He also dismissed insinuations that the PCOS machine could not reject the fake ballots nor previously scanned ballots.
The voter’s education was also attended by several mayoral candidates in both first and 2nd district of Capiz.
