Monday, January 11, 2010

CHAOS AT THE 2010 POLLS?

“Reports said that out of 600 ballots fed into the Smartmatic-TIM machines, only 30 were read by the machines. The rest were rejected.” That’s 95% rejection rate!

If Comelec would proceed with the automated election system where only 5% of the votes cast were validated, it would provide President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with a ”valid” excuse not to declare the winners in the presidential, vice presidential, and senatorial elections. — Perry Diaz

Automated polls on despite failed PCOS test

by Aytch S. de la Cruz
from The Daily Tribune

Reacting to reports that the Commission on Elections (Comelec’s) initial testing of the Smartmatic-TIM’s automated machines in laboratory testing, proved to be a failure, since there were too many ballots rejected by the machine, Malacañang yesterday said that despite the failed tests, the country’s first automated national elections in May will push through.

“We are confident that any problem will be appropriately addressed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec),” Presidential Spokesman Gary Olivar said during a Palace press briefing.

Earlier, Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal was quoted as saying that some of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines failed to read most of the ballots during a lab test at the Smartmatic warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna.

Reports said that out of 600 ballots fed into the Smartmatic-TIM machines, only 30 were read by the machines. The rest were rejected.

According to Larrazabal, the machines were erroneously set at a “high shading threshold,” thus they were unable to read partial and lightly shaded ovals …

Read the full story >> Automated polls on despite failed PCOS test

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