Complaints of PCOS failures still tiny fraction of 78,000 machines

With the general election period already more than two-thirds of the way through, anecdotal reports continue to pour in regarding the supposed unreliability of the automated election system. But the total number of malfunctioning voting machines may still end up being a tiny, acceptable fraction of the 78,000 machines nationwide, most of which seemed to work just fine.

 

Complaints started almost as soon as the precincts opened at 7 a.m. Dozens of reports of glitches in Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) voting machines came in from across the country.

 

As of 4 p.m., GMA News was able to field some 1,000 complaints related to PCOS machines, ranging from unreadable ballots at a precinct in Batangas to a drained PCOS machine battery in Cotabato City.

 

One concerned citizen in Santiago, Isabela reported that as many as 14 PCOS machines were down as of early afternoon. Yet another reported that the machines in Mangatarem, Pangasinan did not have an operator. It was not clear, however, if these problems have since been resolved.

 

The reports were fielded via telephone and social media through the Eleksyon 2013 Incident Tracker, a joint effort between GMA News and the AMA Education System.

 

Yet despite numerous reports of machine glitches and hitches in the voting process, the Comelec still considers the elections to be largely successful.

 

"Yung reports natin (of problems and machine failures) ay madalang, yung tipong isa o dalawa lang per municipality, so hindi sya matuturing na failure of election," Comelec commissioner Christian Robert Lim told GMA News in a TV interview.

 

"And kahit magkaroon ng failure, they can still vote manually," he added.

 

The poll agency is confident that it will see at most a two percent failure rate —equivalent to 1,560 machines out of the 78,000 units deployed, an apparently accceptable failure rate.

 

In any event, the Comelec assured the public that it has 2,000 spare machines on standby to replace malfunctioning units.

 

On the other hand, Smartmatic Asia was even more optimistic of the performance of its own machines: the government's PCOS machine supplier expects no more than 300 machines to fail – less than half a percent of all the machines distributed across the country.   

"Throughout the day, we will reach 200 or 300 (replacements). Of course, it's uncomfortable. If that happens, everybody would feel that the precinct is collapsing. But that's more or less the nature of an automated elections in any country," said Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores in a chance interview at the Commission on Elections' (Comelec) national canvassing center.  

 

According to crowdsourced data as of 4 p.m., some 1,200 "Comelec admin problems" were reported to GMA News – about 20 percent more reports than those listed under "PCOS machine problems".

 

Such problems ranged from slow lines in Lubao, Pampanga, to leaky roofs in a precinct in Rosario, Batangas. The breakdown of complaints fielded by the Eleksyon 2013 Incident Tracker as of 4 p.m. were as follows:

• Comelec admin problems: 1,240
• PCOS machine problems: 1,063
• Cheating attempts 498
• Other violations: 368
• Brownout and other infrastructure problems: 196
• Violence and intimidation: 168
• Others: 2,704