Watchdog seeks creation of body to look into conduct of May polls

Questioning the credibility of the first nationwide automated elections last week, a political and electoral watchdog on Monday called for the creation of an independent body to look into the conduct of the May 10 polls. At a press conference in Quezon City, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) expressed wariness that the procedures in the elections were flawed and vulnerable to fraud due to lack of the necessary safeguards. “CenPEG calls for the formation of an independent, non-partisan, and impartial citizens’ body to review and assess the conduct of the May 10 automated elections, including the processes and procedures taken and the budget use in preparing for the elections and thereafter," said a group statement read by Bobby Tuazon, the group’s director for policy studies. Tuazon, who also acts as the group’s spokesperson, expressed doubts about claims that the elections were successful due to unresolved questions on malfunctioning Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, wrongly-configured compact flash cards, and failure of transmission of poll results. “Until we find answers, it’s hard to declare whether the automated election system was successful," he said. “There are several weaknesses, which make the AES vulnerable to all types of fraud. The long delays in transmission of results, these are vulnerable to fraud. “ But Commission on Elections spokesperson James Jimenez stood by the integrity of the polls and explained that the discrepancies observed could be solved by the random manual audit of precincts. “Sa tingin ng Comelec, karamihan ng nagsusulputang problema ay maaring ma-trace sa human error ng sistema. Yung kredibilidad ng sistema ay buo at hanggang sa kasalukuyan ay di pa napapatunayang nakokompromiso," Jimenez told GMANews.TV. (The Comelec believes the problems that cropped up could be traced to the system’s human error. The system’s credibility remains solid and up to now, has not been proven to have been compromised,) Pablo Manalastas, an information and technology expert and University of the Philippines professor, explained how wrongly-configured compact flash cards — which store instructions on how poll machines read ballots and transmit results —could lead to erroneous reading and counting of votes. Several PCOS machines malfunctioned when they were tested the week before the elections. This prompted the Commission on Elections to recall the CF cards, because the data they contained did not match Comelec’s new ballot design where the candidates’ names were listed horizontally, instead of vertically. Manalstas explained that Smartmatic-TIM (Total Information Management) failed to reconfigure the CF cards when the Comelec changed the ballot design. Thus, votes for a certain candidate would be counted for a different candidate. CenPEG cited reports from the ground saying some rural precincts received the CF cards late May 10 evening or have yet to receive the cards as of Monday, one week after the scheduled polls. With these observations, the poll watchdog urged the Comelec to disclose or explain the actual number of PCOS machines that successfully transmitted results, how the transmissions were done, how many of the reconfigured CF cards reached their destinations, and whether the ultraviolet lamps to be used to verify ballots’ authenticity were indeed used. Evita Jimenez, CenPEG’s executive director, said her group is looking into whether it would seek legal action to compel Comelec to divulge all the necessary documents, electronic or in hard copies, to prove the integrity of the May 10 elections. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV