At least 533 vote-counting machines (VCMs) and 216 secure digital (SD) cards were deemed defective by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on the day of the 2022 national and local elections on Monday, May 9.
Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said the defective VCMs represented 0.502 percent of the total 106,174 machines that were used by the poll body for the nationwide elections.
""What is important of 106,174, only 533 VCMs ang nagkaproblema (had problems)," Casquejo said.
Out of the 533 defective VCMs, 105 machines or 19.70 percent were immediately repaired by election technicians. Meanwhile, out of the 216 defective SD cards, 215 cards or 99.54 percent were replaced by the technicians.
Earlier, Commissioner George Erwin Garcia said a total of 1,867 issues were recorded by the Comelec during the conduct of the elections.
This included 940 VCMs that encountered paper jam, 606 VCMs that rejected ballots, 158 VCMs that had problems with its scanner, 76 VCMs that were not printing properly, and 87 VCMs that were not printing at all.
Casquejo said there were 1,900 contingency VCMs for this year's elections. This was lower than the 7,000 to 9,000 extra machines allocated in the 2019 midterm elections.
Reports of defective VCMs and SD cards hounded the automated elections as voters complained of queueing up for long hours just to cast their votes in the polling precincts.
Voting ended at 7 p.m. although the Comelec still allowed voters who were lined up in polling precincts at the time the polls closed to cast their votes.