The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) issued a statement yesterday asking the Commission on Elections (Comelec) not to destroy the compact flash (CF) cards which malfunctioned during the testing of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines on May 3.

“The destruction of the remaining CF cards should be stopped and a review of their contents be done by an independent group of experts to determine the cause of the May 3 Final Testing and Sealing [FTS] errors,” said the group through IT consultant Lito Averia.

He cited Sec. 27 of Republic Act 9369 (Amended AES Law) which provides for a review and assessment of the AES technology used after the elections.

“Comelec just doesn't have the right to destroy valuable items (CFCs) needed for auditing and examination of the poll automation conduct by their representatives, independent poll watch dogs, and other advocacy groups,” also said Bobby Tuazon, CenPEG director for policy studies.

The poll body “cannot just tamper with legal procedures and evidences needed to audit the automated election system (AES) and as evidence when election protests are filed. The country's millions of voters have a high stake in the election and wanted the process to be fair, transparent, and judicious,” he added.

“Comelec should now come up with procedural controls to avoid the same errors from recurring should the same automated election system (AES) technology be used for future elections,” added Averia.

CF card controversy

The CF cards have raised controversy in the aftermath of the elections, with 62,000 CF cards of the 76,000 total having to be replaced a week before the polls due to repeated malfunctioning when it came to reading the names of local candidates. The rest of the cards were re-configured.

Some candidates have also said that the cards might have been “preprogrammed” to cheat.

“These flash cards may have been preprogrammed. How can it happen that Acosta has more votes than me, Nick [Nicanor Perlas] or JC [John Carlos delos Reyes]?" asked independent candidate Jamby Madrigal, pointing out that candidate Vetellano Acosta was dropped from the presidential race before it even began.

Madrigal added that other discrepancies had been noted, including certain candidates getting up to 99 percent of votes in certain precincts.

“That’s impossible. There must be really something wrong," she said.

According to Comelec however, a lot of the discrepancies was due to the mix-ups of some CF cards.

“We've been made aware of a situation in some places throughout the country where it seems that the transmitted results do not tally with the contents of the memory card,” said Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez. “We've studied the problem and we've basically narrowed down the issue to the testing and sealing procedures that were performed immediately prior to the elections.”

He added that this was due to some Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) members accidentally bringing the CF cards which were used for the FTS to their municipal boards rather than the ones for the actual elections.

Both Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM pointed out this was due to human error rather than fraud and could still be remedied.