Piñol intends to bring electoral protest to SC

DAVAO CITY, Philippines  – Former North Cotabato vice governor Emmanuel Piñol is expected to bring his poll protest against incumbent Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza to the Supreme Court (SC) after the Commission on Elections’ First Division dismissed it for lack of merit.

Piñol would seek from the SC an interpretation of the true intent and spirit of Republic Act 8436, as amended by RA 9369, otherwise known as the Automated Election System Law.

Piñol said though they first have to file for a motion for reconsideration before the Comelec that recently dismissed his electoral protest against Mendoza over alleged electronic fraud during the May 2010 gubernatorial race in North Cotabato.

The Comelec has to dismiss first the motion for reconsideration before Piñol could elevate the case before the SC.

Among the pieces of evidence presented by Piñol’s camp was the CF card used in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine which showed that Piñol only got one vote from Precinct No. 4712027 as against 529 of Mendoza.

Piñol said another evidence they presented was the “computer logs and audit logs” which recorded every activity involving the PCOS machines.

The computer logs supposedly showed that ballots were continuously fed into the machine within seconds of each other, suggesting that it was not the voters themselves, but only a few individuals, who inserted the filled-out ballots into the PCOS machine.

As observed in the 2010 automated elections, there was a gap of at least one minute between voters to insert their ballots into the PCOS machine, as they had to wait for validation from the machine that their ballots were accepted before another voter in waiting gets to insert his/her ballot into the machine.

The computer logs also allegedly showed that ballots were still being fed into the PCOS machines after the close of voting hours and even two days after the May 10, 2010 elections.

“Data downloaded from the Comelec central computer server, which received all of the results of the elections nationwide, showed that results from several precincts in North Cotabato were transmitted only on Aug. 3, 2010,” Piñol said.

Piñol lamented that despite what he claimed were overwhelming pieces of evidence of electoral fraud, the Comelec’s First Division, in its June 4, decision, decided to dismiss his election protest for lack of merit.

He alleged though that what the Comelec did was simply count the ballots in the contested precincts just like what it normally did in the previous manual elections.

“Our question is simple, in computerized elections, would proofs of computer irregularities serve as evidence of electoral fraud and become basis for an election protest? We will submit to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the provisions of the law covering computerized elections,” Piñol said.