“Only seven voters were able to cast their votes in the morning of Election Day in one precinct, with officials citing delays and server problems among the reasons behind it.”
This is not a report written in advance of the May 10 national elections. The precinct referred here is the College of Arts and Letters and the elections referred to are the university and college student council elections in the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.
According to Halalan sa Diliman, problems hounded today’s automated student elections in UP Diliman: Delays in the opening of precincts and problems with servers of the UP Diliman automated election system. The effect: Voter disenfrachisement.
Mock polls and field tests staged by the Comelec for the May 10 elections have resulted in the same thing: The process of voting is slow and may not accommodate the 1,000 voters assigned per precinct, and there were problems in the transmission of votes.
Is the UP Diliman experience an omen of things to come this May?
What do you think?
[Editor's note: These UP Diliman student council elections, the second time they were automated, turned out to be a success. Read a postscript here.]