THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has initiated the conduct of a probe into defective vote counting machines (VCMs) following the May 9 national and local elections and even before President Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncement.
“Even before the pronouncement of the President, we already initiated the investigation of the VCMs. In fact, the national tech support center was already reviewing the tickets... inannounce po ni Comelec Commissioner (Marlon) Casquejo na nag-meeting po ang project management office together with the DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology ), and the Comelec advisory committee,” Comelec acting spokesperson Rex Laudiangco said in a press conference on Saturday, May 14, 2022.
"At sinangayunan ng Comelec advisory council ang move ng commission to initiate our own investigation of the VCMs,” he added.
During his Talk to the People, which was aired on Thursday morning, May 12, Duterte said that while he sees no irregularity in the conduct of the election, the Comelec should still probe election fraud allegations in order to allay the public’s doubt.
The just concluded polls were criticized after several VCMs malfunctioned, causing voters to camp out to polling centers.
The delays brought about by defective VCMs reportedly denied several people to vote.
The Comelec earlier said that around 1,800 VCMs and SD cards malfunctioned during the election days.
Some voters assumed that the fraud happened when the VCMs and SD cards broke down in the middle of the process and had been replaced.
Out of the 97,315 VCMs used in the election, 96,981 were refurbished machines.
Casquejo earlier said that the agency will discard these refurbished VCMs.
“I think this is the last dance for our VCMs. We will not use them anymore in the 2025 (midterm) elections,” said Casquejo.
“Even if they say the budget for the 2025 elections is small, we will insist that we would not use these VCMs for the succeeding elections. The VCMs have reached their limit, (their) life span,” he added.
Earlier, Laudiangco maintained that no electoral fraud happened on May 9, noting the testament of poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on the accuracy of the result.
The PPCRV said there was a 98.39 percent match rate between the second batch of the encoded physical copies of election returns (ERs) and the electronically transmitted results from the Comelec’s transparency server.
But Laudiangco revealed that the DICT foiled over 20,000 attempts to attack the Comelec’s website, including the one carrying election results.
Laudiangco said they were able to identify some Internet Protocol (IP) addresses involved in the attacks and deeper investigation for the filing of charges against the individuals involved is underway. (SunStar Philippines)