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E-mailWith just six days before the elections, the Commission of Elections (COMELEC) ordered yesterday the recall of all compact flash cards in all Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines to be used in the May 10 elections.
The order came after Smartmatic admitted errors in the configuration of the compact flash cards, which are instrumental in the reading of ballots and the database storage in each PCOS unit.
In a memorandum signed by COMELEC Executive Director on the Automated Elections System (AES) Jose Tolentino, Jr., the government poll body ordered machine provider Smartmatic to: “(1) Open the PCOS... in order to remove the Main Compact Flash (CF) Cards that are sealed inside the PCOS; and (2) transport the CF Cards back to the Cabuyao [Laguna] Central Warehouse for reconfiguration.”
"Instead of identifying specific places, we've just gone ahead and decided to treat this as a systemic problem. We're treating it as if it affects the entire system. So we will be pulling out the flash cards of all the PCOS machines to be used in the May elections and replacing them with new ones," COMELEC spokesperson James Jimenez explained on ANC regarding the said recall.
He added that the reconfigured flash cards must be delivered to the polling precincts by May 7 and must be tested and sealed immediately upon delivery.
Failure in the 76,000 flash cards was caused by the “double-spacing” of the texts in local ballots, which was “incorrectly read” by the PCOS machine, Smartmatic Southeast Asia president Cesar Flores explained.
"We have 2,200 layouts if you mix municipalities and districts. We only need to test the 2,200 layouts. However, if all the jurisdictions will be affected, that means we will have to reprogram all 76,000 compact flash disks,” Flores said.
Lito Averia of AES Watch affirmed Flores' observation on the failure of the flash cards, saying that it failed due to the “design of the ballots.”
Furthermore, the IT analyst SysTest, in a statement written by Kontra Daya (Anti-Fraud), identified 23 findings that may lead to glitches in the AES.
“The [SysTest] review exposes several problems in the source code that have heretofore not been publicly discussed or admitted by Comelec,” Kontra Daya said.
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