The public trusted that the COMELEC will safeguard the electoral process.

However, the poorly explained technical glitches – around 600 vote counting machines (VCMs) that malfunctioned; 1,000 corrupted SD cards and the 7-hour data outage of the COMELEC transparency server on May 13 due to Java error – are casting doubts on the credibility of the election results. Further, the secrecy of the location of the COMELEC central server, its back-up and what is called as the ‘transmission router’ are making the electoral processes clouded rather than transparent.

The way COMELEC is managing the electoral processes seem like a regression from the time we have started automating the elections. These glitches could have been more quickly resolved with today’s more advanced technologies. Until these issues are fully explained, we cannot help but think of the likelihood of election results being manipulated.

Further, more than the technical glitches, rampant vote-buying has become more troubling that even President Duterte has confirmed that it is an integral part of the elections. The accreditation of an administration ally as dominant minority party and denying NAMFREL’s access to key election data reinforce public perception of lack of fairness in the COMELEC’s conduct of the polls.

If these issues are not fully explained, these events will continue to cast doubt among the Filipino people and lessen our trust in the capability and independence of the COMELEC in managing future elections.

We call on the COMELEC to fully explain the technical glitches, particularly the 7-hour outage of the transparency server to allay the public’s fear of manipulation of the electoral processes.

We support the call of accredited citizen election arm PPCRV for COMELEC to grant access to data logs of the transparency server to explain what happened during the 7-hour outage.

We call on the public to continue to be vigilant in watching and protecting the sanctity of our votes.