Poll fraud — as clear as day FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 06/04/2010

Poll fraud — as clear as day

FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 06/04/2010 From the looks of it, the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC)’s canvassing of the votes for both the president and vice president, and even all the other elective posts, may be yielding fake votes, and fake certificates of canvass — all of which point to massive electronic fraud. It has been found by the NBoC yesterday, that some, if not many, clustered precincts and provincial election officers have been sending the NBoC very compromised votes to be canvassed, as some votes were “reconstituted” and “reconciled.” As usual, the culprit in all this are memorandums coming from Comelec officials, giving more last minute changes, lowering thresholds — and not to forget the Smartmatic that has also made a mess of the electronic voting through their machines and transmittal. The idea or the push for automated polls, even with a huge bill of over P7 billion which the Filipino people will have to pay Smartmatic, was to ensure that there would not be human intervention, but the way it looks today, there certainly was a lot of human intervention involved — including cheating through electronic means, plus of course, the “reconciled” votes, which are a first in this country. But this is where one can clearly see how the eradication of virtually all the safeguards — including the poll body and Smartmatic’s discarding of the electronic signature, and adopting instead the so-called electronic markings of the precint count optical scan (PCOS) machines, which is really a stupid move, since relying on the markings of the machine does not necessarily translate to the election officers having given their digital signatures. Worse, since apparently, the contract Comelec has with Smartmatic calls for the tech provider to get back its machines in 10 days time, as these have only be leased — and to think that these machines were just leased for a whooping P7 billion. We have been had by Smartmatic and the Comelec. But aren’t the PCOS machines evidence? .... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100604com2.html

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