Voters are advised to be careful when casting votes and avoid overvoting.
Nebeth Modesto, a poll clerk who will serve in Barangay Pasong in the Municipality of Sibalom, said that voters have to carefully observe the number of candidates they should choose for a certain position.
“I tried to overvote in the position of provincial board and the VCM did not read my vote or it was invalidated,” she said in an interview following the vote-counting machine (VCM) final testing and sealing (FTS) at the Sibalom Central School on Saturday.
Modesto, a teacher at Luis Baraquia National High School in Sibalom, Antique, said there is no problem when the voter would undervote because the VCM could still read it, but overvoting for a certain post would cause the votes to be invalidated.
She added that voters should fully shade the ballots, but only lightly so the marking pen provided by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) would not blot.
However, the use of a black ordinary pen is also accepted.
“It is not advisable that the voter will only check or put a point before the names of their candidates because the VCM is also invalidating it,” she said.
Mayflor Vegafria, chairperson of the Election Board at Barangay Pasong, said the VCM is user-friendly.
“It is not really difficult to operate the VCM and it is functioning well,” she said.
She added that they had been trained by the Comelec and were given a handbook to refer to for the VCM operation.
Sibalom Municipal Election Officer Mario Meynard Miciano, supervising the VCM final testing and sealing for the entire 88 precincts of the municipality, said an ordinary black pen could be used in case the Comelec marking pen would run out.
“So far the FTS in Sibalom went on smoothly,” he said in a separate interview.
He said the 88 VCMs deployed to the municipality had been functioning well.
Antique Provincial Election Officer Wil Arceño said so far none of the machines tested since May 6 had encountered major glitches.
The province has 794 VCMs to be used in the 794 clustered precincts.
Of the 387,998 registered voters of Antique, a big number are from Sibalom with 39,558.
Source: Philippines News Agency
