The Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) is recommending the reuse of existing precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and the use of one or more voting technologies for the 2016 national elections. CAC Chairman Louie Casambre announced the body’s recommendations during the joint congressional oversight committee (JCOC) hearing on the automated election system at the Senate on Thursday, August 14. The recommendations were submitted to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Wednesday. The CAC recommended the optical mark reader (OMR) technology used by the PCOS machines to be the primary voting technology in 2016. “The electorate and the election officials are used to it already,” explained Casambre.
Aside from the OMR, the advisory council also pushed for the use of one or more secondary voting technologies, such as direct-voting electronic (DRE) technology, provided that these inter-operate with the canvassing system. Filipino-developed systems would be given preference, adds the CAC. CAC strongly suggested that these secondary technologies be used in metropolitan areas.
… PCOS machines were used in the 2010 and 2013 automated national elections. The machines were hounded with various problems, from transmission issues and defective PCOS units and compact flash (CF) cards, to “digital lines” that appeared in decrypted ballots during the random manual audit.
Recently, there was a report of a “big disparity” between the PCOS count and the manual count for the votes received by senatorial candidate Brother Eddie Villanueva in 3 clustered precincts in Nueva Ecija during the 2013 midterm elections.
Full Article: Reuse of PCOS machines recommended for 2016 polls.