Its All in the PCOS

my experience not only showed the disorientation of the board of election inspectors inside the actually polling precinct, the room where we actually made the markings on the ballot. but, it started with the distribution of the priority numbers, in some precincts. there were precincts who distributed the tag numbers by 20s while others continued numbering, from one to hundreds, and so on, so other people who got higher numbers went home and took some rest while waiting for their turn. there were those who got tired, hungry, etc. while in line, because they can't leave the line or someone might insert or overtake them.

I have to agree with you. Although I think the glitches contributed to the problem because lines would stop moving whenever there were technical problems, the bulk of the problem was the fact that Comelec overlook all the other parts of the procedure and concentrated on the pcos machines. There was absolutely no coordination among the BEIs. We were all so excited to use the pcos machines, that we forgot all the other issues.

Well if I would contribute my own experience in here. It was the clustering of precincts that created the problem. We were clump into one precinct where before we were about six precincts but since we were clump into one obviously we would crowd on one pcos machine to serve about a thousand voters. I think the lawmakers maybe right about adding more pcos machine. Election would have been smoother since per precicnt would reach about 300 to 500 voters all in all. Comelec just compressed it to saved from the cost if they would get pcos machine for each precinct that existed. Another lookout would be the procedures, Comelec concentrated on the pcos operation but they forgot about the preliminaries.

on the contrary, we had enough BEIs in our precinct. i don't really think it's the number of BEI staff. if it was the reason, then long lines and long hours of waiting should have been a problem since the manual election. i'm not sure about the whole country, but majority of the people i had talked with, who voted from different regions, long lines started during set up (since most cards/replacement cards were late or whenever PCOS machines jammed even though the interval of feeding one ballot to another is half minute or more (since you have to wait for the "congratulations!" message). the two verification process you're talking about has been done since manual election and it's ALWAYS necessary to do things twice when it comes to matters as such. you have to sign twice, give your right thumb mark twice, etc. you know, when you work for a call center and you fall on a financial account, the FBI (assuming it's US financial account), asks all of their employees' fingers mark/s right and left for verification. so i personally think two stages to verify your identification on a NATIONAL ELECTION isn't really a big deal. what was really lacking on our first attempt to automated election i think, was not the preparation of BEIs but THE PREPARATION OF THE WHOLE AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM. they could have sent replacement cards earlier and not during the election, they could have started training people to handle PCOS machines related issues right from the start of the campaigns not together with the testing of automated voting, and etc. i also believe, since it's everyone's first time, especially those who are not technically adept to such automations, we all had our share of first-time jitters, especially the senior citizens. everything we'd done then were filled with extra cautions, excitements, doubts, etc. i think we'll be better on our next chance.

Aye, aye. That was my exact observation and the best suggestion of all. The automated elections would have been a complete success if there weren't such long lines. And there wouldn't be long lines if there were more BEIs. I also experienced the three BEIs against a thousand people. What the heck is that. There were so many people lining up. But since there was only one person giving the ballots, there were more people lining up, less people voting on the tables/chairs. So anyway, I completely agree with all that you said. :) I hope the COMELEC takes note of the suggestions of people for the next elections.

that's a good suggestion. to save money from buying those expensive pcos machines, we can just have more BEI and support staffs in a precinct. we can also choose a big room because in our precinct, there was only 10 tables for the voters so many have to wait for those voting to finish before they can take their turn.

I agree. I don't live in your country of course, but I've been reading a heck of a lot of posts from people who do. And most of them talk about the problems they had with the automated voting. But what you're saying is what seems like the problem. I think they probably learned a few things this time that they can use to improve the voting process for the next election, wouldn't you think?