(Eagle News) – The Commission on Elections said that it found around a thousand SD cards submitted to them to be defective, while 450 vote counting machines had malfunctioned.
Comelec commissioner Rowena Guanzon said that the 1,000 defective SD cards were higher in number than the previous 120 SD cards which were found to be defective in the previous 2016 elections.
In the monitoring done by the Comelec, Guanzon said that the 1,000 defective SD cards came from a new supplier which submitted the lowest bid.
Some marking pens were also found to be faulty.
The poll body said that it would make sure that penalties would be imposed on the suppliers which provided defective SD cards and marking pens.
Despite the reported defective SD cards and vote counting machines which malfunctioned, Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said that this would not result in a failure of elections since the problem was immediately resolved.
They got the information on the votes, and the faulty vote counting machines were replaced so the voting continued.
Comelec also reported some delay in the transmittal of votes because of problems with the transparency server, according to a report by Eagle News Service reporter Earlo Bringas for Eagle Broadcasting Corporation’s special coverage on the May 13, 2019 elections, Desisyon ng Bayan 2019.
Jimenez however said that they will also fix this issue and would know on Tuesday, May 14, when they could have a partial proclamation of the national candidates.
He said that all of the voters who had lined up to participate in the polls within the vicinity of the polling precincts were allowed to vote even after the 6 p.m. cut off time, as the Comelec had earlier declared.
The Comelec has already convened as the national board of canvassers, and had started the canvassing of votes at 4:30 p.m, on Monday, May 13.
