MANILA, Philippines (Corrected 10:03 a.m., April 24) — The Philippine Consulate in New York said it is temporarily suspending ballot feeding after one of its Vote Counting Machines encountered a technical issue.
Ballot feeding will resume on Monday, April 25, it added in an announcement.
Related Stories
In an advisory, the Consulate said one of its VCM encountered a technical issue during the latter part of the ballot feeding process when one of two remaining ballots got stuck inside one of the VCMs.
Election observers witnessed it and the incident was also captured on the live Facebook video stream, the consulate added.
“Although a secondary VCM is available, the Consulate decided to suspend the ballot feeding until it receives guidance from the Commission on Elections whether said VCM, which has not undergone final testing, can be utilized.
The consulate said that since the poll body cannot immediately response to them due to time difference, they decided to resume feeding the remaiing ballots on April 25, Monday.
“By then, Comelec guidance would already have been given,” it added.
Overseas absentee voting for the 2022 national elections started on April 10 and will continue until May 9. — Kristine Joy Patag
--
(Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article reported that ballot feeding would resume on February 25. This has been corrected to reflect that ballot feeding resumes April 25.)