SC asked to compel Comelec to probe 'tampering' of May 9 polls

MANILA, Philippines — A petition was filed before the Supreme Court (SC) asking it to require the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to look into the alleged "tampering" of the automated election system.

The petition asked the high court to compel the poll body to prosecute Smartmatic officials who were allegedly responsible for the incident.

Petitioners Eduardo Bringas, Bishop Reuben Abante and Moses Rivera also asked the SC to order the Comelec to explain the fall in the discrepancy between votes for president and vice president a few hours after the partial and unofficial tally were transmitted to the transparency server.

The petitioners noted that there was an apparent erratic upsurge and abrupt fall in the discrepancy of votes at 7:25 p.m., 7:45 p.m., 8:05 p.m. and 8:25 p.m. on May 9.

The petition seeks to require the Comelec to conduct an independent and thorough investigation on the Smartmatic officials who allegedly tampered with the server used in the elections.

The petition asked "for Comelec to provide the complete data of the updates of the elections for the position of the president and vice president from the time the votes were transmitted on May 9, 2016 up to the time before the actual canvassing of Congress in the same sequential order of updates received by the network, indicating the places where the votes came per update result."

The petitioners also want competent information technology experts to examine the source and hash codes and provide them with a copy of the final report of the Random Manual Audit from 715 precincts that were audited.

Comelec Chairman Juan Andres Bautista and some commissioners were accused of showing bias by making conclusions on the issue. The petitioners asked that the poll officials inhibit themselves from the investigation.

The Comelec and Smartmatic had earlier denied that there was cheating in the move to revise a part of the programming script of the transparency server. Bautista said that the change in code was only "cosmetic" and did not change the values in the transmission of votes. — Patricia Lourdes Viray