Comelec mulls manual barangay, SK polls

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday said the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan polls set on Oct. 25 may be done manually despite the introduction of the automated election system in the country.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said it is not practical to automate the barangay polls since they do not have to be nationally consolidated.

“For barangay and SK elections, we do not have consolidation on a nationwide scale. It becomes more expensive (to automate) in the sense that you are not utilizing the system to its capacity,” he said. For the May 10 local and national elections, the Comelec leased some 82,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines from Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. for P7.2 billion.

The contract covers only the May 10 elections so the Comelec will have to lease the machines again or look for other technology if it wants to computerize the barangay and SK polls. “If you just do a hand count (for barangay and SK elections), it will be done in several hours and you don’t need to consolidate it anyway so you can go ahead with the proclamation,” Jimenez said.