Power outage won’t affect polls

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has assured the public that contingency measures are in place for the May 2016 elections, ruling out any possibility of a massive power outage or erratic electric supply, particularly in Mindanao, during the polls.

“In case of a power failure, our vote-counting machines are equipped with batteries, particularly long-life batteries,” said Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) earlier warned of an energy deficiency, particularly in several areas in Mindanao, that could result in power outages during the next elections.

The NGCP said the power crisis is being caused by the continuous tripping of transmission facilities because of several fallen trees and irregular maintenance service.

Jimenez said the Comelec sought to secure vote-counting machines with battery life of at least 12 hours, which is the  length of the voting period on Election Day.

Generator sets

He said they have also acquired a sufficient number of generator sets to ensure back-up power supply. The gensets will primarily be used during the counting and transmission of election results.

“We have gensets that are always on standby for the evening hours [after voting],” said Jimenez.

Meanwhile, Jimenez said the delivery of the 93,977 voting machines by Smartmatic–Total Information Management Corp. are on schedule.

“The machines will be undergoing hardware acceptance testing first before we can introduce them to the public… but all our preparations are on track,”

Based on the Comelec timeline, the initial delivery of 10 voting machines shall be made in September. This will be followed by 400 units in October, 12,000 units in November, another 12,000 in December, while the remaining units will be delivered by January.