Comelec scrambles to fix, replace 76,300 flash cards

WITH only six days to Election Day, the Commission on Elections and its technology provider Smartmatic International Corp. must replace the compact flash cards on 76,300 voting machines after many of them failed in testing Monday.

Software in the vote-tallying programs was flawed and must be replaced, said Cesar Flores, president of Smartmatic Asia Pacific. Producing, programming and distributing the compact flash cards by May 10 would be “a logistical challenge,” he said.

Comelec and Smartmatic officials called a press conference after failures were reported during tests run in Makati, Taguig, Muntinlupa, and Pateros, as well as in the provinces of Batangas and Mindoro.

In a field test in Batangas, the votes cast for Liberal Party candidates were counted in favor of their rival candidates running under the Nacionalista Party.

In Muntinlupa, the votes for Nacionalista standard bearer Manuel Villar Jr. were not read, and in Mindoro, the votes cast for some candidates of the Nationalist People’s Coalition were not read and only those for the candidates of the administration Lakas-CMD-Kampi were counted.

In Makati, the machines read only the votes for Bigkis Party mayoral candidate Erwin Genuino.

Senatorial candidate Gilbert Remulla said his party also discovered during testing that the votes cast for its congressional candidate Benjamin Tria in six municipalities of Mindoro were not counted. “Votes cast for president and congressional positions were affected,” he said.

He added that the Nacionalistas received reports from Pateros that the votes in their favor were not counted, and that only the Liberal Party votes were read.

In Manila, the son and campaign manager of mayoral candidate Joselito Atienza said 80 percent of the machines were not working properly.

Former Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes barged into the Comelec session hall while the press conference was going on to register his displeasure.

“This is not acceptable. We are playing with fire and bringing this country to the edge so somebody’s got to be responsible… The entire electoral process is failing,” said Reyes, who is a nominee of the party-list group 1-Utak representing the transport sector.

“We demand from Comelec an exhaustive investigation, and we have to find the people responsible and accountable for this debacle. The people responsible must be hanged!”

Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., who was at the press conference, took a swipe at Reyes, whose stint as energy secretary was marked by blackouts in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

“They will be hanged, together with those people responsible for the power outages,” he said, and Reyes stormed out of the session hall.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said it was a “good thing” that the glitches were spotted in time.

Some 15,000 more machines were supposed to be tested Tuesday. Testing and sealing of the precinct count optical machines were scheduled for three to seven days before Election Day to ensure that the equipment is in good working order.

Jimenez said the problem affected only the votes cast on the back of the ballot, which is the portion meant for local candidates.

He said that memory cards should have been configured in such a way that the machines would be able to read the double-spaced layout.

Flores said it had been impossible for Smartmatic to detect the error earlier because this was the first time that they were allowed to use sample ballots with the official candidates’ names.

He added that all the machines and the alignment and integrity marks of the ballots were tested at the National Printing Office in Quezon City, where the official ballots were printed.

Flores maintained that six days were enough to recall all the compact flash cards and to reship them to 76,300 clustered precincts before the May 10 polls.

The machines would again be tested and sealed once the new compact flash cards were delivered, he said.

“No machine that cannot pass will be used during elections.”

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said he was confident that the May 10 polls would push through despite the new glitches.

But the secretary general of the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections, Eric Alvia, doubted that the problem could be corrected.

“We’re not optimistic,” he said.

“How can you introduce these things when you’re down to five days? If we need to go manual, go manual.”

Over in Malacañang, President Gloria Arroyo expressed concern over the reports on the faulty counting machines and ordered the Commission on Information and Communications Technology to help the Comelec sort out the problem.

In the wake of the latest glitches, the Makati Business Club and its allied organizations repeated their call to the Comelec to resort to manual counting. –Joel E. Zurbano with Fel V. Maragay, Joyce Pangco Pañares, Rudy Brul, Julito G. Rada, Macon-Ramos Araneta, Ferdinand Fabella, Bloomberg