by Jovie Cabais | May 16, 2010 | Tech Updates
Auza.net hosted websites www.dyrdam.com and www.boholnewsdaily.com recorded user traffic several times than normal daily traffic due to the interest of many Boholanos around the world on the first automated elections on May 10, 2010. DYRD-AM Worldwide Broadcas peaked at almost 5,000 page views in a 24 hour period between May 10 to 11 when it started to publish the unofficial tally of the COMELEC results based on the official website that published the precinct counts. This number of page views is 20 times higher that normal. Most users did not notice slowdown of the sites. This unprecedented capabilityof Auza.net hosted websites to survive usage spikes is proof of the company’s robust server infrustructure hosted at a US facility. When Boholanos needed to get information about the elections, the websites did their job. Share...
by Jovie Cabais | May 16, 2010 | Tech Updates
Various doomsday predictions were quickly proven wrong at the close of the elections on May 10, 2010 when results started pouring into COMELEC and PPRCV servers. The swift counting due to the implementation of the PCOS machines and other technologies employed by COMELEC and Smartmatic gave no time at all for dagdag-bawas operations which would have been quite easy to do in the previous elections. The random manual audit (RMA) also has shown no significant variations from the PCOS counts. Only one more unofficial check remains: To review if the precincts included in the RMA are not significantly different compared to those not audited. So far though, the election results are looking credible and the PCOS machines proved to be accurate in the counting. The country was given positive feedback by foreign observers and the US and UK congratulated us for the successful elections. However, even with the successful automation of the ballot counting, the clustered precincts suffered long lines and delays because the queue of voters was not managed well. Each set of BEIs had different methods of managing the queue. The fastest moving queues where those given priority numbers from 1 to about 1000. The slowest were those processed in batch of 10s or 20s. The queue management was dismal in most precincts. We hope that in the next election, priority numbers should be part of the election materials to be distributed by COMELEC. This is a low tech solution for a low tech problem. Also, a holding room beside the precinct would be good also because it allows the voters who are about to enter the...
