The Philippine Online Chronicles

The National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) today called for a parallel manual count in the May 10 elections, in light of the Commission on Elections' (COMELEC) order to recall and reconfigure all flash cards in all Precinct Count Optical System (PCOS) machines that will be used in the automated elections.

In a statement, NAMFREL, a non-government organization which monitors election proceedings, emphasized that the parallel manual count must be “conducted immediately right after the close of elections."

“As machine failure appears to be quite widespread, it is prudent to increase the number of PCOS machines subject to the random manual audit from just five machines per congressional district to three to five percent of machines per district as we had originally proposed,” NAMFREL explained.

The election watchdog also called for Smartmatic to “submit all recalled cards... to an audit process to determine the precise configuration or programming errors.” It added that all replacement cards “must be fully tested.”

COMELEC yesterday ordered the recall of PCOS flash cards due to the card's failure in reading the format of local ballots.

'Bilang ng Bayan'

Meanwhile, NAMFREL announced that it will conduct the “Bilang ng Bayan” (Count of the Nation)--an independent count on election day.

Formerly known as “Quick Count,” the “Bilang ng Bayan” will be held at La Salle Greenhills. The COMELEC earlier rejected a quick count operation but later decided to print 30 copies of election returns—22 of which will be made available to the public.