Originally until 6 p.m. only, the voting period has been extended to 7 p.m. by the Commission on Elections due to delays and long queues, reports GMANews.tv and ABS-CBNNews.com.
ABS-CBNNews.com reports that the long lines are because of the reduced number of precincts from over 300,000 in the last election in 2007 to only only 76,347 this year. The change was made on the assumption that the use of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines would speed up the poll process.
"We would like to inform everybody especially those out there voting and the Board of Election Inspectors that it seems the voting process is not as fast as we expected or desired," Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said.
