MANILA - An electrical glitch temporarily disrupted the voting for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections in two polling precincts at Pasong Tamo Elementary School on Monday.

The vote counting machine (VCM) in both precincts shut down thrice following three consecutive power outages.

The electoral board chairperson in charge of one of the affected precincts was able to record the outages at exactly 9:54 a.m., 10:08 a.m. and 10:11 a.m. Voting resumed soon after.

According to the assessment of an engineering personnel of the school, the glitches may have been caused by a loose connection.

To prevent another power interruption, he advised the electoral boards to plug the VCMs directly to the wall sockets instead of using extension cords.

VCM technicians from the Commission on Elections and the electoral board chairpersons in charge of the clustered precincts assured those who voted prior to the electric problem that their records were not deleted.

“Good thing po is andoon pa rin ‘yong mga records— ‘yong votes pati ‘yong names na naka-encode po sa VCM,” said Maria Jesusa Maglaya, the Electoral Board Chairperson of Clustered Precinct 555.

“Kahit biglaan, hindi po siya nawawala. May backup po siya,” echoed VCM Technician Daniel Borja.

Edna Bañaga, the Chairperson of the Barangay Board of Canvassers (BBOC), also described the power interruptions as "minor" issues.

“Kasama po talaga ‘yan pag gumagamit tayo ng mga equipment (nang) sabay-sabay. Although initially we had Meralco and the local government (check) the electrical capacity of the school,” she said.

In a separate statement, Meralco said the BSKE period ended "without any major power interruption."

"Minor incidents that were reported were isolated and immediately resolved with the help of our crews who are strategically positioned across our service area," it said.

Aside from electrical issues, there were also incidents of paper jams whenever voters would try to feed their ballots to the VCMs, but these were quickly resolved.

Pasong Tamo Elementary School, where 32,000 people were expected to vote, is just one of three polling centers in Quezon City that was chosen by the Comelec to conduct automated elections as part of its pilot testing program.

This made the voting process easier for most of the voters in the area since they no longer had to manually write the names of their chosen candidates.

“Around 2 minutes lang (ako bumoto), madali lang,” said Amelia Tamon, who came to vote in the afternoon.

The automated system also makes for a quicker canvassing of votes. The SD cards used for the vote counting machines in the other two polling centers in Barangay Pasong Tamo were brought to the Pasong Tamo Elemetary School for canvassing.

But before the BBOC began the process, it made sure to set up the consolidation and canvassing system in front of members of the media and poll watchers for transparency’s sake.

“Very important part of the procedure na makita po nila na talagang zero at wala pong paunang kahit na anumang boto ang kahit na sinumang kandidato,” noted Bañaga.

The Comelec expects to get the results for the elections in the area in just an hour after polling precincts closed at 3 p.m.

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