SC allows Comelec to conduct VCM demonstration

The Supreme Court of the Philippines building in Manila, Philippines. (Photo by Mike Gonzalez / Wikimedia Commons.)

MANILA—The Supreme Court (SC) En Banc allowed the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday morning to undertake a demonstration of two vote counting machines (VCMs).

One of the VCMs was configured only for “on-screen verification,” while the other one was configured for “on-screen verification and printing of the receipt.”

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim and Marlon Garcia, Smartmatic project manager, led in the demonstration.

Lim explained that in the first VCM, a period of 15 seconds is needed to show to the voter the “onscreen verification.”

In the second VCM, he said the process of on-screen verification and printing of receipt will last for a total of 60 seconds or one minute.

He added that since each clustered precinct has a capacity of up to 800 voters, it would mean that the process will entail another 13 hours, excluding the initialization of the VCM, which is 15 minutes for each 200 ballots it has read.

Lim also said that the additional time to be incurred if there’s a need to replace the roll of the thermal paper and the paper in the VCM jams also has to be taken into consideration.

He further explained that to put additional details on the receipt such as the ballot number and polling precinct, the source code of the VCM has to be reconfigured.