COMPLAINTS in the official canvassing thru the vote counting machines (VCMs) in the city’s precincts has surfaced.
The VCM’s glitch complicates with the election returns that has come out before the voting was through and worse the sudden brownout in some precincts while there were no brownouts in nearby areas, the complainants said in media interview.
The complainants, who manifested no interest of filing a formal protest before the Comelec, are supporters of mayoralty bet city Vice-Mayor Toto Veloso and vice-mayoralty candidate City councilor Atty. Dodong Gonzaga.
According to Glenda Bulatete, in barangay Tiptip elementary school, the glitch included the VCMs failure to receive filled ballots. To be able to VCM to function, “Gibukbok ang machine, kulatado bun-og na,” she said. (The teacher incharge of the voting tapped for several times the VCM to be able to receive the filled ballots and she asked the teacher why the teacher did it, but she received no answer).
Also in barangay Tiptip, Vilma Villaroya said that she was being kicked out of the premises while she was looking for her name and precinct. A certain teacher-friend Celia Sulague, said to be incharge of the said precinct, called kagawad Mercado to pull her out of the place. She told the kagawad that she did not do wrong as she was just looking for precinct where she is in.
She said that the VCM machine in her precinct was also defective. But she has to vote and left the ballot not being fed to the machine. She said that she did not know if the defective VCM was replaced as she left earlier.
Ruel Pernisa, a vice-mayor office staff and former worker of the SmartMatic in 2010, said that there was no “pre-audit” as supposed to be done prior to the operation of the VCMs.
He said that “pre-audit” like an inspection of the VCMs before its use and testing is important. All in the VCMs must contain zero data.
He explained that there are slots, for instance, slot A and slot B. If slot A failed to register ballots being fed to the machine, there’s a backup, slot B.
Whenever brownouts/power interruptions occurred, the possibility that thousands of votes are affected in few minutes of power interruptions is not impossible, he said. Hence, the “pre-audit” is needed, he concluded.
He said he learned that the brownouts partly occurred in whole of Cogon elementary school, some classrooms where the voting took place in City elementary school, parts of Bohol Island State University (BISU) where the Poblacion I voting and some precincts in barangay Bool elementary school.
For his part, retired Captain Dexter Balane, who also helped and monitored Veloso-Gonzaga’s watchers, said that his request for 12 watchers was not granted by the Comelec. He was only given eight (8) watchers when the administration almost has two or more watchers.
He also bared that the machine bogged down prompting the voters to just leave their filled ballots and gone home early as they cannot wait for replacement.
The supporters cry for their votes for they cannot believe what Veloso and company got after the canvassing.
Earlier, the Team Abante Tagbilaran of then city Mayor Dan Neri Lim (DNL) strongly questioned the result of the votes count.
The group told media interview that they have been asked by their loyal followers, Where did our votes go?
They cannot believe the outcome of the votes after the count via VCMs.
For Leda Saco, former barangay Manga chairperson and candidate for city councilor, observed that after the count in her barangay the nine of the top ten councilors are all from the line-up of Jane Yap and only one from their camp. And the 11th slot is one of the candidates under Yap and the rest are coming from DNL’s line-up. This is questionable, she said.
Saco said she was one of the top ten in all the precincts of the barangay and her co-candidates are at the bottom.
In the city, an electorate has to elect 10 regular councilors.
Poblacion I barangay chairperson Arlene Karaan, who also threw her hat in the city councilor derby, found a pattern in vote counting in favor of the Asenso PaMore camp of Mayor-elect Jane Cajes Yap and Mayor Baba Yap, the nephew of DNL.
Why there’s somewhat uniform of votes garnered by Yap’s line up, except that they differ only few number of votes cast.
She said she was surprised that the Team Asenso Pa More has already posted the result while the counting was not finish yet.
And this is the third time that it happened since 2016.
Another “wonder” in the city is that one of the candidates for councilor under the team Asenso Pa more is being dropped. In 2016, Gerry Pabe, one of them, did not make it. Greggy Gatal was accommodated but did not make it 2019. Bompat came in the last election (May 9, 2022) but failed, also. And the tenth councilor that was elected in top ten is reelectionist opposition Jonas Cacho.
This is the amazing pattern, Karaan said.
For his part, DNL said that “nangita ‘mi sa among boto,” banking on what called “built-in” supporters that count some 14,000 plus.
“I am not an ordinary candidate,” citing his past exploits and positions in the city before.
Aside from this, the team Abante was not short of strategies, logistics and very competitive, DNL said.
Team Abante is not more on winning the elections but to protect the votes of the people, especially those who voted the team, Lim said.
Ronnie Orillosa, one of the team Abante city bets said that he accepted the defeat but what he cannot accept is the alleged fraudulent result and irregularities of the counting.
Team Abante said it has no intention to formally file a complaint but it wanted to let the people know what is going on the city vote count. (rvo)
