Comelec spox cites fast election returns transmission, over 70% three hours after voting

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) cited the speedy transmission of elections returns for Monday's voting, showing that over 70 percent of the returns have already been received.

Comelec spokesperson Rex Laudiangco said at least 73.34% have transmitted poll results as of 10:19 p.m. on Monday.

“At exactly 10:19 p.m., nakapagtransmit na po ng 73.34% in three hours or so. This translates po to 106,174 na precint na [may vote counting machines] VCMs; 77,877 na po ang nakapagtransmit ganon karami na po sila,” he said.

“Kami po ay namangha sa bilis ng resultang ito,” he added.

The Comelec spokesperson also announced that the proclamation for the local positions will be held on Wednesday.

“For local positions, the best case scenario is tomorrow po, most of them will be able to proclaim,” he told the reporters.

He said that there were also few reports of the continuation of voting beyond 7 p.m. for those voters in line before the closing of polls.

Laudiangco said the vote counting machines (VCMs) were not too problematic in 2019 as they were relatively new.

“Nagamit lang po sila noong 2016, pangalawang gamit pa lang po noong 2019.  ...Ngayon nasa nine years na po ang mga VCMs and we really expect issues,” he said.

He said that they anticipated these problems which led them to establish eight regional hubs and SD technical repair hubs in the provinces.

“We instituted at least eight regional hubs in so far in anticipating issue in SD cards, we had brought down SD technical repair hubs to the provinces. We have 82 provincial technical hubs which will deal with the SD cards.  Mas malapit po at mas mabilis,” he said.

Comelec-National Capital Region (NCR) Director Temie Lambino also assured that no untoward incident was reported in the region except for long lines in some precincts due to the malfunctioning VCMs. He added that they also addressed those issues.—LDF, GMA News