Viral post on defective vote counting machine misleads

A viral post questioning a procedure adopted by Commission on Elections personnel on defective vote counting machines (VCM) is misleading.

In a Facebook post, a concerned voter narrated her experience on the malfunctioning machines, citing the precinct officers’ contingency of receiving their ballots and listing their names on a sheet of paper.

The voting machines in our precinct aren’t working, so the precinct officers instructed us to cast our votes but leave the ballots with them. This means we cannot witness our ballots being fed into the machine; otherwise, we have to wait until 6pm for COMELEC to replace the machines. Is this even legal? Pilipinas, anonaaaa. #Halalan2019

Here’s the “list of received ballots” — you write your name on that sheet of paper after you’ve given your ballot and that serves as your ‘receipt’.

But this process on defective machines is in accordance with Comelec Resolution 10497 Section 5C on VCM Malfunctions, which states:

8. While waiting for the VCM malfunction to be resolved or the arrival of the replacement VCM, the EB (election board) shall announce to the voters casting or waiting to cast their votes that they have the option:

i.) To proceed in casting their votes by shading their ballots which shall be batch-fed by the EB before the close of polls. In this case, the EB shall inform the voters that this constitutes waiver of their right to be issued voters receipt. For this purpose, EB shall temporarily place shaded ballots inside the Envelope for Rejected Ballot, Half of Torn Unused Official Ballots, and Other Half of Torn Unused Official Ballots, and Counted Official Ballots.

ii.) To wait for the VCM malfunction to be resolved or the replacement VCM to arrive, for them to cast their votes and personally feed the ballot in the VCM.

_________________________________________________________________

The views and information in ‘Tsek.ph’ are those of their respective authors and owners and do not reflect the official policy or position of the media and academic partners of Tsek.ph.