Proclamation delays

Technical glitches of SD cards, transmission of data stall complete voting tally in CdeO, MisOr

PROCLAIMING of winning candidates in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro City may be delayed until Thursday if technical glitches involving the Secure Digital (SD) cards are not fixed to transmit remaining election results to the servers of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

City Comelec officer,

lawyer Ramil Acol said that as of Wednesday afernoon, there were 14 SD cards needed to be reconfigured but only 4 were successfully fixed as of Tuesday.

Once reconfigured, the electoral board will insert the ballots again to the vote counting machines (VCMs) to start the transmission. This process takes five hours for each of the VCMs to complete.

Acol said the results and proclamation could still be on Thursday, if not on Wednesday, May 15.

Out of the 401 precincts, 387 precincts have successfully transmitted election results. So far, the voters turnout in the city was at 76.68 percent.

"The 14 remaining precincts could still affect the standing of top six to eight councilors," he said.

These precincts still have over 10,000 voters.

Meanwhile in Misamis Oriental province,the

municipalities of Balingasag, Balingoan, Gitagum, Jasaan and cities of El Salvador and Gingoog have yet to transmit the results of the election due to corrupted SD cards as of 3pm, Tuesday.

Lawyer Aleli Ramirez, chair of the Provincial Board of Canvassers in the province, said corrupted SD cards are hard to replace because it needs codes for reconfiguration to have it fixed.

"Kasagara (most have) corrupted SD cards and it's not easy to replace kay (because) we need codes from Manila,"Ramirez said.

Ramirez assured that votes are not affected as the SD cards only contain the list of registered voters of a particular precinct.

"After ma-reconfigure katong mga balota i-feed to balik sa machine. Importante ang SD cards kay dili mobasa ang machine kung wala to kay ang ballots are precinct-specific so dapat katong SD cards para gyud ana kay kung sayop dili man basahon ang balota," she added.

(After the ballots are re-configured, these will be fed back to the machines. What's important is that SD cards won't read the data from the machine if there are no ballots, and that these cards are precinct-specific, so the SD cards should match with the ballots assigned, otherwise, it won't read any data.)

Ramirez said the proclamation of winners may be delayed until the problem is solved.

However, Ramirez said those towns that have completed the canvassing can already proclaim winners for positions in the municipality.

GUARDED. Election volunteers continue to take turns in watching the ballot boxes where election returns temporarily stored within the City Hall of Cagayan de Oro, as the counting of votes draws to a completion on Wednesday. (KRIS SIALANA/ SUNSTAR SUPERBALITA)

MANILA. Comelec Chairman Sheriff Abas says there were more defective vote-counting machines (VCM) and Secure Digital (SD) cards this year than in the past elections. (Al Padilla/ SunStar Philippines)