18,000 PCOS machines suffered transmission woes — Brillantes

Almost a quarter of the total number of the vote-counting machines used in the recently concluded elections showed transmission problems, the Philippines' top poll official admitted Thursday.

According to Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr., about 18,000 of the 78,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines — or 23 percent — had transmission problems due to various reasons, from defective compact flash (CF) cards to low cellular network signal.

"Most of this are transmission problems, not the PCOS problems," Brillantes said in a chance interview.

This confirmed earlier figures cited by poll watchdog Automated Elections System (AES) Watch, which has criticized the Comelec for the supposedly problematic conduct of the May 13 elections.

According to AES Watch, 18,187 or 23 percent of the clustered precincts had failed to transmit election returns four days after Election Day, affecting some 8.6 million voters.

There was one PCOS machine for every clustered precinct. The Comelec has reclustered 77,829 precincts, each accommodating 600 to 1,000 voters, in the last elections.

Earlier, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) lamented the slow transmission to the transparency server that releases the unofficial count of election returns.

Asked if the PCOS should be blamed for the slow transmission in PPCRV, Brillantes said, "It is not the PCOS that's defective." He said the "heavy traffic" slowed down the transmission to the PPCRV, adding some areas had weak signals during the elections.

Brillantes noted too that the coverage of telecommunication companies, which serviced PCOS supplier Smartmatic Asia in the transmission, spans only 75 percent of the country.

"[But] I'm not saying it’s the telcom problem. I can tell them that their coverage cannot be more than 75 percent. I’m sure of that,"  he said.

Brillantes said they would issue a report on the conduct of the elections next week. — KBK, GMA News