Glitches, blunders, errors, failure marked 2010 polls — CenPeg By Charlie V. Manalo 10/06/2010

Glitches, blunders, errors, failure marked 2010 polls — CenPeg

By Charlie V. Manalo 10/06/2010

Despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering the Commission on Elections to release to several groups involved in checking on the integrity of the automated election system adopted by the Comelec on May 10, 2010, the source code and other pertinent documents for their testing purposes, the poll body has still not done so, and will likely be cited in contempt by the high court.

Despite the absence of the source code and other documents at the Post Election Summit (PES) organized by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPeg) yesterday at Club Filipino in San Juan, Professor Felix Muga pointed to a high incidence of technical glitches and hitches, blunders, voting procedural errors, and other operational failures throughout the country during the May 10, 2010 automated elections, citing among other things the: (a) Precinct Count Optical Scan malfunctioning, breakdowns as shown in many precinct incidents across the country, with the late deliveries, malfunction and shutdowns, unreliable back-up batteries, and equipment shortage marred the disposition and operation of PCOS machines, thus causing delays in the opening of voting, counting, and thewhole election day process itself;

(b) Defective compact flash cards. The delays in the delivery of reconfigured CF cards (in some cases, absence or loss of the memory cards) and using defective memory cards figured in the high-incidence reports, delaying Final Testing and Sealing (FTS) and voting, or absence of FTS. A high percentage of CF cards being brought manually to canvassing, and precincts resorting to manual voting were also reported. In many cases, this problem also resulted in failure of elections or in electoral protests involving the manipulation of CF cards; (c) Use of unofficial thermal Paper; (d) Failure to verify the authenticity of ballots as provided by law with the non-use of UV scanners by a significant number of precinct (Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs); (e) Irregularities in voting procedures & voter disenfranchisement; (f) Transmission snafus. The fact about extensive transmission glitches – not simply an isolated case – shows an unsound decision to enforce an election technology when the required telecommunication infrastructure is unreliable. The satellite contingency hit snags..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101006hed1.html