With now less than a hundred days until the elections, the COMELEC's efforts of redeeming its public image have totally gone awry. In the latest string of issues of which the poll body has been constantly under fire from mainstream media and bloggers, the recent field test of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) by handpicked COMELEC and Smartmatic personnel is perhaps the worst as of yet. The test conducted on January 29 at an Elementary School in Aguho, Pateros, Metro Manila, turned to be an utter failure (if not disaster) when the machine failed to read 4 out of 10 valid ballots, which, contrary to the reason COMELEC offered, were not crumpled and were apparently in good condition. This exposed the most vulnerable weakspots of the system which have earlier been pointed out by critics of the Comelec-Smartmatic Automated Election System, and which the Comelec brushed off as fearmongering.
BAYAN Secretary-General, Renato Reyes Jr., who was present during the test, observed that aside from the 40% failure rate of the PCOS machine used, "the Comelec and Smartmatic technicians present at the test could not give an answer as to what will happen to a voter if his/her valid ballot is not read by the machine" (since a voter cannot be given a new ballot as per new election rules issued by the Comelec) and that "the Smartmatic technician seemed ill-prepared to setup the Broadband Global Area Network satellite device." Reyes was referring to the device used to transmit election results to the board of canvassers when the three different SIM cards and two modems failed to establish a stable internet connection. The transmission of data took three hours using different systems.
The Commision on Elections, however, claimed that the test was a success since the data was still transmitted and that the three-hour delay was still within their 36-hour period for results transmission. But this was with only ten valid ballots tested and at a location within Metro Manila—an urbanized area where cell site signals are supposedly strongest. There is no telling how much delay it would cause to transmit the results of the millions of ballots come May 10 elections, not to mention that many of the voting precincts are in areas where Telco signals are unstable, if not absent at all.
With this as the most recent of all the failures of the poll body despite its insistence of their preparedness with the hastily planned automated election system, skeptics are more becoming wary of a failure of election scenario. For his part, Renato Reyes Jr. calls on the public to be vigilant and to keenly observe the mock elections which will be conducted in several cities and provinces on February 6, to "see if things have improved or if we're headed for a really disastrous May 10 elections."
BAYAN Secretary-General, Renato Reyes Jr., who was present during the test, observed that aside from the 40% failure rate of the PCOS machine used, "the Comelec and Smartmatic technicians present at the test could not give an answer as to what will happen to a voter if his/her valid ballot is not read by the machine" (since a voter cannot be given a new ballot as per new election rules issued by the Comelec) and that "the Smartmatic technician seemed ill-prepared to setup the Broadband Global Area Network satellite device." Reyes was referring to the device used to transmit election results to the board of canvassers when the three different SIM cards and two modems failed to establish a stable internet connection. The transmission of data took three hours using different systems.
The Commision on Elections, however, claimed that the test was a success since the data was still transmitted and that the three-hour delay was still within their 36-hour period for results transmission. But this was with only ten valid ballots tested and at a location within Metro Manila—an urbanized area where cell site signals are supposedly strongest. There is no telling how much delay it would cause to transmit the results of the millions of ballots come May 10 elections, not to mention that many of the voting precincts are in areas where Telco signals are unstable, if not absent at all.
With this as the most recent of all the failures of the poll body despite its insistence of their preparedness with the hastily planned automated election system, skeptics are more becoming wary of a failure of election scenario. For his part, Renato Reyes Jr. calls on the public to be vigilant and to keenly observe the mock elections which will be conducted in several cities and provinces on February 6, to "see if things have improved or if we're headed for a really disastrous May 10 elections."
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