Voting machine problems

 one of our cousins just won an election for a local office, and the maid mentioned that the ballots were paper and being counted by hand.

Hmm... I had thought the Philippines, worried about fraud (pre filled out ballots hidden in the back room) had changed to machines to vote and count ballots.

But apparently the machines, bought at great expense, have problems. 

Headline from the Inquirer:

Comelec: 180,000 old poll machines up for grabs

...Garcia was referring to two types of machines—precinct count optical scanners (PCOS) and vote-counting machines (VCMs)—both of which were provided by Smartmatic Corp...The government spent at least P7.2 billion for the lease of the PCOS machines, and another P2.2 billion for the VCMs alone in 2016. The poll body had also funded their refurbishment.,,,so the plan is to repurpose the machines for other uses and spend oodles of money buying new machines. From whom? Smartmatic...

From Newsweek last May: 

Malfunctioning machines caused voting precincts to open much later than 6 a.m., the scheduled time for voting to begin. These issues—compounded with delays caused by COVID health protocols—resulted in long waiting lines and overcrowding in key localities. Rappler further reported that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said at least 1,867 vote-counting machines exhibiting glitches had been fixed as of 10 a.m. on Monday, while 51 defective machines were replaced by 8 a.m.

more here in an Inquirer article from last May.

This is why Ruby reports the students in Manila are convinced that Marcos stole the election over populist candidate, Leni Robredo.