Defective SD cards, faulty VCMs hit W. Visayas polls

ILOILO CITY — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) 6 (Western Visayas) said Tuesday it immediately addressed the issue of vote counting machines (VCMs) that malfunctioned and SD cards that were found defective.

Lawyer Jose Nick Mendros, Comelec-6 director, said in a press conference at the Regional Election Monitoring and Action Center (REMAC) that the Comelec replaced malfunctioning VCMs with contingency machines.

The region has about 600 contingency machines, distributed to every legislative district, he said.

He said malfunctioning VCMs and defective SD cards only made up a small percentage of the total number of VCMs and SD cards in the region.

Out of the 7,109 VCMs used in the region for Monday’s election, 192 were reported to have malfunctioned.

“I would like to put that into proper perspective. If you get the 192 percent of the machines that malfunctioned (out of the 7,109 VCMs used), that’s only 2.7 percent,” Mendros said.

Meanwhile, the region had 80 defective SD cards as of 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

Mendros reiterated that the number of defective cards is minimal compared to the total of 14,218 SD cards used.

He said that the defective SD cards only made up 0.63 percent of the total SD cards used during Monday’s elections.

Iloilo and Guimaras are not yet done with their canvassing of votes because of the defective SD cards, he said.

“We have established a regional technical hub that reconfigures these SD cards. The delay is caused (by) the downloading from the central office in Manila,” Mendros said, adding that he cannot give the exact time when the defects of the remaining SD cards will be solved.

The defective SD cards, he said, could hinder the proclamation of winning candidates in some areas.

“We are doing our best. We do not want to detain out teachers and security personnel in the polling precincts only because of defective SD cards,” he said.

Currently, Comelec-6 is updating its data on the number of towns and cities that have already proclaimed their winning candidates.