Comelec to spend additional P2B for vote receipt printing

The Commission on Elections will have to spend an additional P2 billion to print and issue vote receipts during the May 9 polls, the poll body's spokesperson James Jimenez said.

Appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms last Thursday, Jimenez said the poll body would have to make the necessary changes in its preparations for the upcoming polls to heed the Supreme Court ruling on the activation  of the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or the vote receipt printing feature of the vote counting machines (VCMs).

Among the changes the Comelec needs to implement are conducting a new trusted build for the Vote Counting Machines (VCM), the Election Management System (EMS) and the Canvassing and Consolidation Systems (CCS), as well as the procurement of necessary supplies and services.

During the hearing, Jimenez said the source code of the VCMs would have to be changed because the act of tearing off the voter receipt makes the machines prone to paper jams.

The current configuration of the VCMs causes the machine to automatically shut down for five minutes following a paper jam, consequently prolonging the voting process.

“The solution is to change the source code in order for the system not to suspend operation or require a restart in case of a paper jam,” Jimenez said.

In addition to addressing the problem of paper jamming, the Comelec official said changing the source code of the VCMs is necessary to allow it to print vote receipts reflecting the machines’ hash code and ballot ID as an additional security feature.

The VCMs should also be able to produce duplicate vote receipts and an option for a voter not to print a receipt.

“The solution will require all the VCMs to undergo another source code re-certification although the final test runs of the machines for Overseas voting, Tawi-Tawi and Sulu were already finished as of March 8, 2016,” he explained.

As part of its poll preparations, Jimenez said the Comelec will launch  a massive voter’s education campaign to inform the public about the new procedures involved in the printing of vote receipts.

“Up to this point, our voter’s education is focused simply on feeding the ballot into the machines and not tearing-off the receipt from the machine,” he said.

Jimenez also revealed that the Comelec is preparing a contingency Project of Precinct (PoP) with a cluster of 400 voters per precinct in the event the elections would have to be done manually to ensure it will proceed as scheduled on May 9. —ALG, GMA News