PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) Machines – Unboxed
We took on the invitation of Smartmatic to see how the voting machines worked. But I went one step further. Being a self-professed geek, I asked the Smartmatic demo people if I could do an "unboxing" article in the spirit of Gizmodo and other gadget publications out there.
After some friendly persuasion and assurances that I have never wrecked any brand new gadgets (nothing over thousand pesos anyway), they decided to let me take some pictures provided they did all the handling of the machine.
Simply put, the PCOS is a scanner with an advanced OCR for scanning in, recording and collating the ballots as they're slipped into the machine.
At first glance, as a gadget freak, seeing the voting machine itself was disappointing. No bells and whistles. No fancy keyboards or buttons. It's just a BOX! In this case, minimalism is good.
Am looking forward to a bigger demonstration to see if this machine can really change Philippine elections.
Mock elections anyone?
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- The boxes ready to be moved to the COMELEC. (The Philippine COMmission on ELECtions)
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- No pearly white headphones. No SIM Card. Just the power supply and a sample printout from the machine.
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- The PCOS taken out of the box still wrapped in plastic. In actual operation, the machine would rest on top of the ballot box. This gives an estimate of the size of the actual ballot box.
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- The Model Designation badge (SAES1800), located on the upper left hand corner of the machine.
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- Not really a switch but more a magnetic lock. (More on this on the next picture)
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- This key is used to turn on the PCOS during the opening of polls on election day. The key is uniquely coded to each machine and cannot be used with others.
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- RJ45 port for communication devices for transmission of election results.
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- A lot of people think that the actual voting will be done on the PCOS. We found out that this is not the case. Voters will still fill up their ballots “offline”. The ballots are then fed into the front loading slot of the machine.
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- One can see the closed backup media slots below the ballot front loader. Upon deployment, They will be protected by heavy duty padlocks akin to traditional ballot boxes.
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- Election results are encrypted and saved onto CompactFlash Cards. In case of Transmission failure, these can be physically transported to a precinct that can transmit to the central counting server.
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- Console Port for Diagnostics. Located beside the padlock protected CF Media slot.
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- Thermal Printer that will print out a report on the ballots processed by the machine. Printout happens at the close of polls on election day.
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- Magnify this to see what the end-of-polls election result report looks like. Below the printout is the screen that will alert voters and poll officials of the validity of the ballot recently fed into the PCOS. The screen was blank because the unit was powered off when we took these pics.
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