By GERMELINA LACORTE / Davao Today
Carmen Gultiano, a voter in one of the precinct clusters at the Daniel Aguinaldo National High School, came out of her precinct tired, agitated and unable to hide her frustrations after spending six hours just to vote. Gultiano arrived at her precinct at eight o’clock in the morning and was only able to vote at two thirty in the afternoon.
By CHERYLL D. FIEL / Davao Today
It was not the machine glitches that many people were worried about but the poll clerk’s hunt for names of registered voters and other verification procedures that slowed down the voting process in the recently-concluded elections.
By RITCHE T. SALGADO
With reports from JOSEPH BACUD
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) Region 7 boasted of an 80 percent voter turnout. Pagbabago! Cebu said a number of votes were disenfranchised due to the Comelec’s inability to foresee simple and preventable problems.
MANILA — The transmission of election results did well in Quezon City High School in Kamuning, Quezon City. The transmission of results only took one to two minutes per transaction. The Board of Elections Inspectors told Bulatlat on Monday night that there were no major problems encountered with the Precinct Count Optical Scan machine, unlike in other areas.
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
With reports from CIELO EUNICE FLORES
Reports reveal more problems toward the end of election day.
By RITCHE T. SALGADO
As in most parts of the country, long queues and technical glitches affected the conduct of elections in Central Visayas. In Cebu, there were reports that indicated that only 50 percent of voters have been accommodated by 6:45 p.m.
By MARYA SALAMAT
The snail’s pace in the voting process would create more problems than just the long lines voters have to endure.
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
The May 10 elections have officially began. As expected, the first five hours were far from smooth.
Automation and computerization are supposed to make life easier. It is supposed to speed up processes by minimizing human intervention. After all, machines are more efficient, more precise, and do not tire easily compared to humans. However, this is not the case with the first Philippine Automated Election System.
Election watchdog AES Watch has set up a web-based Citizens’ Election Monitor. Citizens are invited to serve as volunteer reporters in their respective locations and report incidents related to the automated polls to the AES Watch website.
The National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), the largest aggrupation of mainline Protestant and non-Roman Catholic churches and service institutions in the country, exhorts its members and the general public to be doubly vigilant as the first automated electoral exercise is held in the country.