Election fever and the PCOS

TRAILS UP NORTH
Glo A. Tuazon

BONTOC, Mountain Province -- With election fever in the air, Mountain Province along with other provinces in the Cordillera is on its way training people who will be involved with the election process come May 2010.

With the introduction of the automated election machine the Commission on Elections and SmartMatic along with other partner agencies are in the process of screening, accrediting and training applicants on mechanics of the PCOS machine and in general the election proceedings.

PCOS stand for Precinct Count Optical Scan. The selection and training of the PCOS machine started February 1 and will push thru until March this year to be able to fill in all the 218 clustered precincts of the province plus some back up technicians.

The PCOS machine is said to make the election process faster and easier both for the voters and those employed to count the election returns. Individual machines are particularly marked for certain destinations, in other words it is “location specific”. If transferred or put in another locality, the machine will not work.

The ballots are also bar-coded to go along with that specific PCOS machine, being “machine specific”, these ballots would also not be counted nor accepted if it does not fit the area barcode. These are just some of those preventive measures designed to guard this kind of election from fraud and mishandling.

It is explained that from the individual polling center or precints the data is transmitted directly to the central database, to the municipal canvassing centers and the KBP, accredited election arms and Dominant Majority and Minority Parties. And then from the municipal canvassing center, the data travels to the provincial canvassing center and again a copy directly to the central database.

From the provincial canvassing center, data goes to the Congress canvassing center, the Comelec canvassing center and again the central database. The redundance of the returns from every level being sent to the central database is a form of security as a data back up. This way when in one level the data suddenly mismatch, Comelec has a way of counter checking all the returns originating from the problem area.

In the 10 municipalities of Mt. Province, the latest count of registered voters as of Nov. 16, 2009 was 101, 702 and 698 established precincts. With the machine being introduced, Comelec restructured the polling precincts into clusters reducing it to only 218. In Barlig there would be 11 polling precincts, Bauko 38, Besao 17, Bontoc 25, Natonin 14, Paracelis 41, Sabangan 19, Sadanga 9, Sagada 21, and Tadian 23.

The voting population in Mountain Province, as also all over the country are one in hoping that with the PCOS machine, the people would not have to wait so long to know the results of the election returns. -- Email: twilight_glo@yahoo.com