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An automated voting machine will be delivered to the Commission on Elections Cebu province office next month for use in training election officers and orient voters on poll automation for Central Visayas.
Lawyer Lionel Castillano, Comelec Cebu province election supervisor, said the machine called the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) would be the only one used for Region VII’s voters education campaign.
Castillano said the machine would be available for major cities who could gather a big number of people and election seminars requesting for the machine.
The PCOS, a paper-based tabulation machine, includes information on a precinct including the number of voters.
A voter will feed his paper ballot into the eletronic unit,w hich tabulates all results.
About 3,200 machines will be delivered to Cebu province for the May 10 election itself.
Ideally, one machine should be available for each province for voter’s education.
Smartmatic and its Filipino joint-venture partner Total Information Management (TIM) were awarded the project to produce the automated polling machines and conduct automated elections.
Castillano said the Comelec was ready for the 2010 elections.
Earlier, the Comelec Cebu office announced that election officers would be the first to be trained to handle the PCOS.
The Comelec has scheduled training for public school teachers on January.
The PCOS will be placed atop a transparent box with compartments to hold accomplished ballots.
Voters will use special pens to shade ovals beside the names of their chosen candidates from a complete list already printed in the ballot.
It will take less than two minutest for a voter to feed the ballot into the machine. Canvassing time would also be shortened.
The winners of the presidential and national election can be known within 24 hours, according to Smartmatic-TIM.
With the new scheme, voters have to be reminded to “fully shade” an oval using a marking pen proviided by Smartmatic -TIM or else the ballot may be invalidated.
