Auto polls’ integrity compromised, NBoC finds By Charlie V. Manalo 05/27/2010

As multi-snafus of Comelec, tech provider are bared Auto polls’ integrity compromised, NBoC finds By Charlie V. Manalo 05/27/2010 Errors galore by the technical provider as well as the poll body’s incompetence marked the presidential and vice presidential canvassing yesterday, stalling the actual canvassing of votes. An official of Smartmatic who provided the automated machines, along with the system adopted for the country’s first automated elections, yesterday apologized to the congressional canvassing board for the “erroneous” number of registered voters reflected during the initialization process of the consolidation and canvassing system (CCS) server to be used by the National Canvassing Board in the tally of votes for president and vice president. “I apologize for the error that is presented in the server,” Smartmatic president for Asia-Pacific Cesar Flores told the joint congressional canvassing committee yesterday, even as he continued to assure that the data “error” of over 250 million registered voters as recorded in the server “does not have an impact on the individual certificates of canvass. It was also found by congressional canvassing committee that in many instances, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) allowed the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) to do as they pleased in preparing two certificates of canvass, a separate one for the president, and another for the vice president, even when the Comelec officials claimed were just one CoC, not two. Lawmakers quizzed the Comelec for having two sets of CoC for the two highest positions as the congressional canvassing committee reconvened to settle questions on the authenticity of the CoCs before starting its count. Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said that the CoC per area came only from one file but printed in several pages. He claimed that the CoC for one Luzon provinc e was classified only as one document but has 36 pages, as there was pagination. On the matter of the bloated number of voters, with the data registering some 257 million voters was claimed to be a “program error” which was transmitted to the Senate. Cesar Flores admitted to this error, but said that this error was only for the national level. “There was an error in the program. It was adding after per level. When the figure is transmitted to the provincial level, it was added to the figure from the precinct level and so on and so forth,” he said, saying this has resulted in the bloatred numbers of registered voters.... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100527hed1.html

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