Mock polls: Sulu fastest transmitter of results, Starlink plays role

Mudjunun Elementary School in Patikul town, Sulu uses satellite internet constellation Starlink to transmit results for the mock polls held on January 25, 2025. INQUIRER.net / John Eric Mendoza

PATIKUL, Sulu — This province posted the fastest transmission of results for mock elections, which was already done by Saturday afternoon.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman George Erwin Garcia said this feat would not be possible in this province—which grapples with internet connectivity issues—without  satellite internet constellation Starlink.

READ: Comelec irons out kinks, voters try shading limits in Sulu mock polls

“The province of Sulu is the first to transmit results in our server,” Garcia said in an ambush interview at Garcia said at an ambush interview in Mudjunun Elementary School.

“The transmission of Sulu was the fastest, where the internet signal is a bit weak,” he noted.

Aside from this school, Garcia also oversaw the mock elections in Datu Uddin Bahjin Central School in Patikul town and Sulu State College Laboratory High School in Jolo town.

Garcia noted that the teachers in these schools have a technical know-how on Starlink, which has been prevalent in the area.

“They have set-up the Starlink on the roofs of the schools before we arrived,” Garcia said.

“They are used to it,” he continued, “which is why they are the first ones to transmit the results.”

Sulu is among the 15 cities and municipalities nationwide which participated in the mock polls.

At 2:25 p.m. Garcia said that the transmission of mock elections results have been completed nationwide.

“The transmission is now at 100 percent: transmissions from precincts to municipal/city canvassing centers, central  server, PPCRV (Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) and Namfrel (National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections) servers, media server,  majority and minority political party servers and central and backup server,” Garcia said in a later text message to reporters.

Then, Garcia said the transmission has been completed “from MBOCS (Municipal Board of Canvassing Servers) to PBOCS (Provincial Board of Canvasser Servers and 100 percent from PBCOS to National Board of Canvassers.”

The Comelec hopes to replicate it on Election Day, which is why the election provider Miru provided some 7,000 units of Starlink.

These, however, will only be deployed in areas where internet connectivity is weak.

Before Starlink, election facilitators had no choice but to resort to manual uploading of election returns when there were problems in internet connectivity.

They used to transport secure digital or SD cards then bring it to a nearby canvasing area where Consolidation Canvassing System (CCS) machines are located. The CCS conducts the automated tallying and monitoring of data received from polling precincts and lower levels of the Board of Canvassers, while SD cards were made to store the encrypted image of the ballots fed inside the vote counting machines or VCM which refers to the older system used in previous elections.