Picture this: There we all were at the National Canvassing Center, keeping track of the incoming results from the various precincts nationwide, less than six hours from the close of voting on election day, when suddenly, someone points out that the news outlets had gone dark. We checked the incoming streams of election data and everything was going smoothly, but flicking through the channels on television showed that the media reports of partial and unofficial reports had all but frozen. The transparency server was having problems.
I immediately made the trip to the site where the Transparency server was installed and, after a quick but harried conference with the Comelec official in charge, we had a good idea of what might be causing the apparent inability of the transparency server to push election results data out to the media networks, but no easy way to validate our suspicions. For that, we had to open the transparency server logs—the detailed record of the server’s operations—a procedure that required the prior approval of the Commission en banc.
But the en banc had adjourned for the day and the Commissioners were off performing other functions. An urgent call to reconvene was immediately issued, and efforts to put the problem in front of the individual commissioners ensued—before they had even actually gotten back. In the meantime, the media representatives at the transparency server were being briefed about the problem, and various solutions were adopted to allow them to observe the diagnostic procedures being undertaken.
By the time the en banc had voted to authorize the opening of the server logs, several hours had elapsed. It was quickly discovered—in full view of the media representatives to the transparency server—that the solution was to essentially re-start the system in what amounted to a high-stakes, highly technical version of unplugging your computer, waiting 10 seconds, and plugging it back in.
At around midnight, a little over five hours since the problem became apparent, I held a press conference with the media staking out the transparency server and explained what had gone wrong and what was being done to correct it. By a little past 1 a.m. the following day, the re-start had been completed and the updating of the partial and unofficial results by the media had resumed.
In the aftermath of these events on the night of election day, the Comelec’s accredited citizen’s arm conducted an investigation into what had been labeled in the media as the seven-hour glitch. As expected, the investigation showed that no tampering of election results had taken place; that indeed, the canvassing process had been wholly unaffected (remember what we said last week about the three different tracks of electronic transmission?). The citizen’s arm, however, did take the Comelec to task for, first, the basic fact that the problem happened at all; and second, for what was considered the slow response to the crisis.
In hindsight, both observations were—in the bland language of officialdom—well-taken.
First, the problem happened because the “pipeline” through which data was supposed to flow from the transparency server to the various media outlet connections had choked up because of the sheer volume of data being pushed through. It has been pointed out that the pipeline should have been more adaptable and that would be an accurate assessment.
Second, it was clear that the slow response time was the result of overswing. Think back to 2016 when a highly decentralized management system made it possible for an essentially unauthorized correction to ensure the system properly displayed the “ñ” character was allowed. Well, for 2019, we had swung too far in the opposite direction and made the simple matter of opening the server logs subject to the approval of the full en banc. Again in hindsight, a more nuanced and tiered response system would have been more efficient and would have allowed the Comelec to more rapidly respond to an unfolding crisis.
Ultimately, the Comelec paid a steep price for the seven-hour glitch. The credibility of the elections took a hit, and those who were dissatisfied with the outcome were gifted with a new means to call into question—no matter how wrongly—the integrity of the election results. So the question now is, will this happen again?
As pointed out by IT experts, any complicated system will always have the potential for something to go wrong; the best laid plans of mice and men and all that. What matters ultimately is that, if another problem arises in the 2022 National and Local Elections, that it will not affect the outcome of the elections in any way, and that the Comelec will be able to respond to it swifter and more sure-footedly than it did the last time.
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez