FIRST AUTOMATED ELECTION - SUCCESSFUL

The first automated election in Philippines was over. I am one of the technical support for PCOS Machine and I've witnessed a lot things which were unexpected. I have thought that voting would be quick but I was wrong, considering those senior citizens which really need assistance. There was no big difference for manual counting or automated counting if we only talk about time. However, the BEI's (Board of Election Inspectors) could no longer do the manual counting, PCOS could easily do it. On the designated area where I was assigned, I only have two PCOS and there were 1,800 more or less voters in the area. Each PCOS could hold 1,000 casting ballots, therefore, two PCOS would be enough. But still people should line-up unlike the previous manual election where there were more precincts compared to this automated where there's only two precincts - one PCOS for one precincts. Many are complaining because mostly they waited for more than two or more hours to vote. I have hoped that the machine would be fine so that there would be no delay. As hired by Smartmatic TIM as PCOS technician, we should be at our designated area as early as 5am and should sign an attendance at 6 and the voting should start at 7am. I felt glad that I didn't encountered any trouble on machine until 10pm in the evening when the ballots were not properly drop in the ballot box causing a "Paper Jam" error. On my designated area the voting was closed on one precinct, they're done. The machine itself could print election results. First, the 8 copies of local elections were printed. After printing, the machine asked if we were ready to transmit. We used modem for transmission. So, we're done at 10pm but because we didn't have a modem (supposedly there is) we should wait the other precinct. On my area, transmitting the results was easy, I have a good signal unlike those precincts on the mountain areas. At 11:30pm the voting of the other machine was done too and they're ready for transmitting the results. So, we only have one modem from the other polling area and transmission could be done by connecting the modem to a machine. We did it one at a time. After the transmission, the machine would print 22 copies for national elections. At exactly 2am, we're almost done. As Smartmatic Personnel, we were obliged to bring the PCOS machine the the municipal hall and we did it. We arrived at the Municipal Hall at 3am together with the BEI's. The canvassing center have shown their tally on a big screen, so we stayed there for two hours. We're just excited to see the results. At 5am I went home and go to bed. I was very tired that even one day on bed wasn't enough. Well, all those were experiences and I am proud that I was the part of the first automated election.

I'm not really sure if 100% of voters have voted, some are annoyed by the very long line but at least the majority have voted on my area.