Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Several hiccups are preventing the automation system from preparing for the upcoming national elections.
This raises the question of whether the system will be ready by May 9.
One issue the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is facing is that the new vote-counting machines were rejecting 1 to 2 percent of the ballots during tests.
According to Comelec, the self-diagnosing feature of the machines have made it too sensitive to very small ink splatters on the ballots.
This was the same reason that caused digital lines to appear on ballot images back in 2013.
For this year’s elections, the machines were programmed to reject the ballots because of these ink splatters caused by the inkjet printers.
To solve the issue, the Comelec decided to reprogram the machines to be less sensitive to these minute splatters.
Related: Comelec holds demo of vote counting machines
The Comelec’s certifying contractor SLI Global also found a hiccup in the software for the canvassing system.
It prevents the installation of the software into the machine that will be used for canvassing.
Related: Comelec fails to finish finalizing source code
The Comelec said both issues are now being fixed and the software should be ready in about 8 hours.
Comelec optimistic
SLI Global and Smartmatic said these hiccups are normal in developing poll automation systems — a refining process.
Observers, however, raised concerns that all the problems with the machines and software are happening too late in the game.
A previous problem caused ballot printing to be delayed by a week.
Comelec was supposed to start printing ballots last February 8, but was postponed to February 15 after the poll body discovered that it needs to rebuild the source code for the election management system.
Related: Comelec may postpone polls in some areas as ballot printing delayed anew
Lito Averia from the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) said it is crunch time and the Comelec should have anticipated all these hiccups in advance.
In any case, the Comelec said there are still 88 days before the polls and there’s enough time to fix these problems.
