By Butch Fernandez and Jovee Marie dela Cruz
A LAWMAKER on Friday asked the public to heighten vigilance and remain alert against all forms of election fraud.
This, after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) admitted that errors were found in the source codes of the consolidation and canvassing system (CCS) and the vote-counting machines (VCMs) that Filipino voters will use this May.
Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon of Kabataan said the Comelec has been notified by SLI Global Solutions Inc. of “compatibility problems” with the CCS, resulting in the postponement of the scheduled transfer of the source codes to the custody of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Monday.
“Errors were also found in the VCMs, which posted 1-percent to 2-percent rejection rates. The Comelec explained that during the testing of the VCM, it was found that it was overly sensitive and could detect even small ink spots, causing the machines to reject the ballots,” Ridon said.
“With about 52.2 million registered voters, a 1-percent to 2-percent rejection rate translates to about 520,000 to more than a million rejected votes, a significant figure that can make or break anyone’s candidacy. If this is not addressed, it can be exploited by unscrupulous officials to commit electoral fraud,” Ridon added.
As this developed, the camp of Sens. Grace Poe and Francis Escudero asked the Comelec to hold a dialogue with stakeholders to discuss the status of the preparations for the May 9 polls, amid negative reports on the results of its initial testing of the VCMs.
In a letter to the Comelec, George Garcia, the election lawyer of the Poe-Escudero tandem, said such dialogue would address concerns over glitches in the VCM system, as well as other poll-related issues that may hurt the credibility of the electoral exercise.
Ridon asked the Comelec to step up its transparency campaign and not leave the public in the dark about the “finer details” of the automated election preparations.
“The Comelec said it is ‘fine-tuning’ the automated election system, yet we are not sure whether the poll body is actually fine-tuning an orchestrated automated fraud,” he said.
“We call on the general public to heighten vigilance and call out each and every suspicious move that the poll body does. Let us protect the sanctity of the ballot and not let anyone succeed in committing massive electoral sabotage,” Ridon added.
Earlier, Elections Commissioner Christian Robert Lim said the poll body postponed the ballot printing to February 15 because of this compatibility problems.
Printing of election ballots was originally scheduled on February 8.
Lim also expressed concern that the elections may be postponed owing to these delays.