AN election watchdog on Thursday pressed the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to reveal to the public the full details of the problems that the poll body encountered in the conduct of the country’s fourth automated elections early this week.
The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) issued the statement on Thursday after the Comelec admitted that 961 vote-counting machines (VCM) and 1,665 SD cards suffered “glitches” during the polls.
It also called on the Comelec to fully explain the java error which caused the delivery of election returns to various recipients to stall.
The Namfrel asked the Comelec to give them access to the logs of all machines used in the automated election system, without restrictions and consistent with Open Data Principles.
The Comelec was also asked to reveal the location of its Central Server and its backup, and who are managing their operations and to fully disclose and explain the “transmission router” or the “meet-me-room” network set up, how it operates, and who are behind its operations, the watchdog said.
The poll watchdog also asked the Comelec to report if those reported problems have resulted in disenfranchisement of voters.
Comelec Chairman Sheriff Abas earlier said that out of 1,665 defective SD cards, the poll body was able to replace 1,253. Abas, meanwhile, vowed to probe the reasons of the glitches.
Kontra Daya, another election watchdog, said 205 VCM malfunctioned during the 2010, 171 during the 2013 elections and 150 during the 2016 elections.
Moreover, Namfrel said, volunteers in far-flung areas are still waiting for replacement vote-counting machines or SD cards.
“While the count of the VCM that broke down or malfunctioned, corrupted SD cards and the problematic Voter Registration and Verification Machines in pilot areas continue to tick, we have yet to determine the full impact of those problems to the voters, especially in remote areas of the country. Did those problems result to disenfranchisement of voters? This, we have yet to determine,” it added.
“Hidden behind the cloak of secrecy are the Comelec’s Central Server and its backup, as well as what is referred to as the transmission router which in reality is a network of computers and devices through which all election results transmissions were routed,” the group added.
According to Namfrel, the transparency server data outage on the night of election day was “worrisome” for stakeholders, especially among candidates, causing them to wonder the possibility of data manipulation.
It said the data outage cast doubt on the integrity and credibility of election results.