Smartmatic: Municipal-level flashcard delivery 'almost 100%' done by Sunday

MANILA, Philippines - Poll automation supplier Smartmatic-TIM on Saturday announced that all compact flashcards needed for the country's first-ever automated elections have all been shipped out from its main warehouse in Laguna province.

"The good news is the compact flashcards have all been shipped already," Smartmatic Southeast Asia president Cesar Flores announced over radio dzMM.

Flores said 70% of the 76,343 configures flashcards have been delivered to different municipalities and are all ready for "the teachers to pick up."

He said they are expecting to deliver 90% of all the flashcards by the end of Saturday and "almost 100% by Sunday."

Flores is confident that all the flashcards were configured properly as they were all tested before being shipped out from their main warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna.

He reported that all 2,000 plus compact flashcards and Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines tested and sealed on Friday had "100% accuracy."

PCOS delivery

An official document "Nationwide Monitoring of PCOS Machines from Hub to Polling Center," obtained by ABS-CBN News shows that as of 11 a.m. of May 7, or just 2 days before Election Day, only 21,232 or 27.8% out of 76,340 PCOS machines had actually been delivered from the various distribution hubs to 37,422 polling centers.

The 37,422 polling centers, not to be confused with precincts, are the various schools where the PCOS machines and ballots have to be distributed. The polling centers are located in 1,497 municipalities and 137 cities.

Based on the report, 61 hours prior to Election Day, 55,108 PCOS machines or  72.2% had not yet been delivered from the distribution hubs to the polling centers.

As of 11 a.m. Friday, four regions--Cordillera Administrative Region, Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Visayas--still had 0% or no PCOS machines in their polling centers.

Central Luzon region only had 2.5% of the PCOS machines in their polling centers.

Only Eastern Visayas (Region 8), Socsargen (Region 12), and CARAGA (Region 13) had deliveries above 50% as of Friday.