With less than a month to go before the May 10 national and local elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said it is already 90 percent ready to conduct the country’s first ever automated polls.

“Considering that all of the major components are already present, considering that all the major elements in conducting an election are already in place, I would say we are about 90 percent ready to conduct the elections,” James Jimenez, Comelec Spokesman, said in an interview.

As a matter of fact, he said, they already started the delivery of more than 800 ballot boxes to Palawan.

“We are starting with the far-flung areas. Deliveries in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) I believe will start next week,” said Jimenez.

Out of the 77,000 ballot boxes that will be delivered, he said, more than 30,000 are already here in the country and are being kept at the Philpost warehouse in Manila.

Jimenez said even the printing of the official ballot is almost complete with 35 million ballots already printed out of the more than 51 million that will be printed.

“It looks like we will make the April 25 deadline. But there’s also a grace period for that and that’s until April 30,” he said.

Even the teachers who will serve as Board of Elections Inspectors (BEIs) have all been trained already while the training of the Counting Canvassing System (CCS) operators is almost complete.

“The BEIs are just waiting to be deployed. In fact, some of them are already deployed now because they are part of the testing and sealing,” said Jimenez.

“Last week, we’ve trained almost 50 percent of the CCS operators and there’s still an ongoing training in the provinces,” he added.

When it comes to other election paraphernalia such as the folders and pens, Jimenez said they are not that concerned even if they send them out late since these are easy to transport.

“Probably we will ship them out towards the end of April since these are very minor and very easy to transport any way,” he said.

Part of the poll body’s preparations is the setting up of a monitoring facility where Comelec officials can monitor, together with the media, the progress of the delivery of the various election materials.

“We’ll come up with an announcement on the situation room proposal by next week. It will be a situation room where you can get the feeds from all parts of the country so that you can actually see the status of the delivery as it happens,” Jimenez said.

“I think it will be a very useful tool for the public to keep informed of the progress of the election,” he added.

Machines rejecting ballots in Hong Kong

By PAM BROOKE A. CASIN

Voting was temporarily delayed Sunday in a precinct in Hong Kong when one of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines refused to accept a ballot on the second day of automated overseas absentee voting there.

According to Hong Kong-based reporter Jan Yumul, one of the PCOS machines kept rejecting ballots allegedly because of the humidity.

“Smartmatic TIM Corp. officials suggested that the change in temperature might have been cause of the irregularity. They said that the machines were stored at an air-conditioned room Saturday and then when they were brought out Sunday, cold and humid weather mixed,” Yumul said in a text message.

She added that weather in Hong Kong was at 19 degrees Celsius on Saturday and it rose to about 24 degrees Celsius Sunday.

“Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal checked on the situation together with the Special Board of Election Inspectors and Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting chairperson Henrietta de Villa,” she said.

She also reported that Smartmatic officials have already replaced the PCOS machine thrice in once precinct at the Bayanihan Centre but the ballot was still not accepted.

After a few tries, the PCOS machine started accepting the ballot, she reported. “Some of the voters left with a sigh of relief, while others were disappointed,” she said.

Earlier, another precinct experienced the same problem but after they’ve replaced the errant PCOS machine, voting went on smoothly.

Meanwhile, Migrant group Migrante-Middle East disclosed that although overseas absentee voting (OAV) had kicked off smoothly Saturday, only a small number of registered voters have voted.

“There weren’t so many hassles reported in the start of OAV in Saudi Arabia and in other Middle East countries according to our chapters,” John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator said in a statement.

However, he cited that in the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, only 254 voters were able to cast their votes in the first day of the OAV out of the 52, 869 registered absentee voters there.

“In Jeddah and in Al Khobar, only 100 were able to vote respectively,” he said. There are 37,083 absentee voters in Jeddah and 21,597 in Al Khobar.

Monterona attributed the low turnout of voters to the start of OAV period as being a regular working day for most overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) there.

“But we are expecting that there will be a significant number of voters who will be trooping in to their respective polling precincts on April 15 and 16 (Thursday and Friday), when OFWs will be officially off from work,” he said.

In Saudi Arabia, weekends are on Thursdays and Fridays; and work resumes on Saturdays.

Monterona also reminded OFWs that although there are still 28 days to go before the OAV period finishes, it’s better for them to cast their votes early so as to avoid any hassles.