Iloilo poll centers test vote counting machines

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Vote-counting machines (VCMs) to be used for the 2022 national and local elections today, May 9, were tested and sealed for the final time by members of Electoral Boards at polling centers in the city and province of Iloilo on Saturday, May 7.

Daily Guardian went to Iloilo National High School in La Paz, Iloilo City to observe how the final testing and sealing process works.

Electoral Board (EB) members, comprised mainly of teachers, are the ones who are authorized to operate the VCMs as well as assist voters in inserting their ballots into the machines on election day.

The VCMs were run through a diagnostic test to check its effectiveness including ethernet connections, casting buttons efficiency, audio effectiveness, touch screen calibration, image scanning of sample ballots, power supply, use of USB ports, use of the iButton key, among other important functions.

While the diagnostic test failed in the first instance, the teachers in one precinct realized that it was because of their slow response to instructions, which they were able to remedy in succeeding tests.

Richyl Jayme, EB chairperson of one of the precincts, said that this was in the normal course of testing the machines.

“The diagnostic test is there to test the operation of the VCM if they are okay. In case one of the operations fail, we can restart the test so we would be okay. We have to be alert in following the [VCM] commands,” said Jayme.

“We tried the diagnostic test twice to check if the errors were with us [Electoral Board] or we were just slow to respond to the [diagnostic test],” added Wilanne Aguirre, one of the EB members in this precinct.

Once they successfully finished the diagnostics test, they conducted a mock election using sample ballots provided by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) with the machines to test its effectiveness on actual polling.

Jayme said that there were generally no problems with the handling of their final testing and sealing as well as the mock elections.

Poll watcher Ronald Mariano from the Lakas-CMD party, who was assigned to the precinct, also said that the whole process was without any problems encountered.

“The whole process was okay. There were no problems because we saw all of it to see if there were votes [in the VCM’s stored data] or none, so that when we get to voting, there would be no problems as well,” Mariano said.

After recording the results and minutes of the testing and mock polling, EB members and support staff returned the machine to its box, and brought them back together with other important paraphernalia to the school’s holding area.

“We are doing our best in our obligation as [Electoral Board members],” said both Jayme and Aguirre.

Iloilo National High School is just one of the city’s 66 polling centers housing 505 polling precincts, to cater to 330,470 registered voters this May 9.