Elections assessment

The suspicious pattern emerging in the distribution of senatorial votes in the recently-concluded mid-terms elections should be a cause of concern.   The pattern does not only suggest compromised hardware and application but also manipulation of the entire automated electoral system.  

The implications are so serious that we cannot be mere audience to an urgent investigation and rehabilitation of the system. How we respond spells the boon or bane of our cherished electoral process.  What is at stake is not just the credibility of the election results but of the very foundation of our existing brand of democracy.

These problems of course would not have come into the fore had the Comelec abide by the built-in security measures supposedly embedded in the machine and its programs.   Foremost of these is the independent review of its source code as required by the Automated Election System Law.

Then there are numerous security features that were skipped and compromised in the process of repairing malfunctioned machines.

Pagbabago! Cebu documented at least 16 PCOS machines that bogged down half-way into election day.  Seven of these machines failed to boot, while the rest just won't receive ballots.

In Tapul Elementary School in Talisay City, the PCOS machine in Clustered Precinct No. 127 wouldn't accept anymore ballots by 2PM notwithstanding all the efforts of the BEIs and the Comelec-designated technician.  Until 7PM, the machine just wouldn't work.        

As early as 7AM, such problems have already manifested.  In Clustered Precinct 207 at Abellana National School, the PCOS machine failed to boot stranding voters for hours and locking them in a heated competition with voters of Clustered Precinct 208 on who is the first to use the functioning machine.

In all these cases, the machines must be opened and in the process their contents, including the filled-up ballots, exposed, and their security seals prematurely broken, and their CF cards disturbed, and so on and so forth.

Adding more chaos to the conundrum is the perennial problems that pester our polls. 

In Talisay alone, 84 voters were disenfranchised of their right to vote when their names were nowhere to be found in the Comelec list. In Lapu-Lapu City, a voter in Brgy. Pajo and one in Brgy. Gun-ob found their names in the list outside their precincts but not in the 'master list' inside their own clustered precincts.

Generally, the election was not smooth-sailing as Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes would want us to believe.   It was a bumpy ride with unexpected stops in national canvassing and unexplained delays in the transmission of at least 200 PCOS machines (according to Comelec) if not 18,000 or more (according to independent poll watchdogs).