BY GERARD NAVAL

COMMISSION on Elections chair Jose Melo yesterday expressed disappointment over the automated counting machines used in Monday’s Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao elections.

"We would have preferred that it would have been a little faster. We were expecting all reports to be in eight hours after the polls closed," Melo said referring to the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) technology used in Maguindanao province.

DRE allows voting through touch-screens.

Melo also said Optical Mark Reader (OMR) can also be speeded up.

OMR, which requires voters to fill up ballots to be tabulated by special machines, was used in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and the district of Shariff Kabunusan.

Melo said the commission is going to call the attention of technology providers Smartmatic-Sahi for DRE and Avante International for OMR regarding the poll body’s desire to have a faster counting of votes in time for the 2010 elections.

As of 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, as per the monitoring of the Regional Board of Canvassers (RBOC), 99.3 percent of the votes had been counted in Maguindanao province while Shariff Kabunusan already reached 95.5 percent.

Basilan already counted 73.20 percent of the votes; Lanao del Sur, 61.80 percent; Tawi-Tawi, 42.70 percent and Sulu, 30.95 percent.

Melo said there appears to have some "clear winners" but they cannot be proclaimed because the Comelec requires all votes to be counted.

Melo said total voter turnout has reached 84 percent, which is "actually double the percentage than what we were expecting."

Melo said they are still on track with the tentative schedule of completion of canvassing and proclamation of the winners this afternoon

Melo said there is no stopping the commission now in having a fully automated election in 2010.

He said they are looking for a possible combination of the two technologies saying it might be financially difficult to implement a DRE-only system as the machines are expensive.