Solon: Who says automated poll results are credible?

Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano yesterday expressed strong doubts over the credibility and integrity of the automated elections, saying “poll irregularities are now coming out one by one.”

Mariano cited, among other things, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) admission on the discrepancies between the printed and transmitted election results and the discovery of 60 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines in Antipolo City.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the error happened in choosing which memory card to use in printing the election returns (ERs). Jimenez added the error was “largely due to human error and it has nothing to do with the system. The situation has been identified and it has been resolved.”

Mariano recalled that “a week prior to the elections, Comelec and Smartmatic were scrambling to recall, replace and reconfigure memory cards after a major system failure occurred during the final testing and sealing operations last May 3.”

“In the first place,” Mariano said, “up to now Comelec and Smartmatic have not revealed whether they conducted a final testing and sealing activity of the PCOS machines after the bungled May 3 final testing and sealing.”

Mariano added the discovery of PCOS machines in a house of a Smartmatic technician in Antipolo City raised serious doubts on the credibility and integrity of the automated polls.

“It is highly ridiculous that the Comelec allowed the PCOS, the most politically sensitive machine in the world today, to be held for safekeeping in a house of a technician,” Mariano said.

“One clone PCOS machine can manipulate the eletronic results nationwide. What more if there are 60?” the Anakpawis lawmaker pointed out.

Smartmatic’s Cesar Flores said it is their policy to allow a technician to “look for a safer place” to store the PCOS machines should the school or municipal hall where they are supposed to be kept proves not to be secure. He added the technician could no longer alter the results of the election since these had been transmitted to the canvassing center before the units were unplugged and stored.

The militant lawmaker also raised serious doubts on an intervention by the United States in the recently concluded automated polls to establish normalcy in the situation and prevent chaos that might arise from a nationwide failure of elections.

“The so-called ‘results’ of the automated polls which are a reproduction of pre-election surveys smack of CIA-type operations in a vain attempt to establish normalcy in the volatile political situation and prevent the explosion of protests in the country,” Mariano said. “Preventing a failure of elections by all means, either through fraud and installing an acceptable new US puppet because Ms. Arroyo must go, is for the benefit of the US. Unfortunately, the US did it quite rough.”

“The fast transmission of still questionable results was hyped in the media, conditioned public mindset, while massive poll irregularities at the local level arising from PCOS failures, transmission failures, disenfranchisement, incidents of pre-shaded ballots, vote buying, and election-related violence, among other things, were downplayed,” Mariano said.

Anakpawis party-list also called on the Comelec to expand the manual audit to at least 50 percent to check the accuracy of the results of the automated polls. Charlie V. Manalo, Daily Tribune