Election watchdog doubts accuracy of VCMs

A broad based alliance of advocates of clean and honest elections warned of possible discrepancies in vote counts during the counting of ballots if there will be no genuine source code to verify the accuracy of the vote counting machines (VCMs).

Rick Bahague, an information technology (IT) professional and convenor of Kontra Daya said that inaccurate ballot counting will not be farfetched if the glitches in the recent mock election are made the basis.

He noted observations from mock polls held at the Kalibo Pilot Elementary School in Aklan province Saturday which showed discrepancies in vote counts (from one to three votes) for certain candidates in almost all positions.

During the manual count and tal- lying of votes cast in Aklan, the VCMs were found to have miscounted 20 votes. During a repeat in the manual count, the VCMs reportedly miscounted 10 votes.

“The accuracy of the vote reading and counting capabilities of the VCMs have been found questionable since way back in 2010. How can we trust the result of this batch of VCMs?” Bahague said.

Alarm bells Kontra Daya monitored 11 rejected ballots and 1 misread ballot out of 66 voters in the said precinct.

Bahague stressed that this translates to 18 percent of total votes cast that were not counted.

“Rejected and misread ballots by VCMs are tantamount to voter disenfranchisement and a violation of our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote,” Bahague said.

Saying the people’s right to choose the rightful leaders will be violated, Bahague said such a high error rate is alarming and may affect the outcome in a close race.

“What we have observed is merely the counting of votes at the precinct level by VCMs. We have yet to see the behavior of the consolidation and canvassing servers at the municipal and national levels. How many votes are miscounted or consolidated by the canvassing machines?” Bahague asked.

In the traditional manual method of elections, dagdag bawas (vote shaving/ padding) occur at the canvassing level.

Bahague wants the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic to assured the electorate that there will be no automated dagdag-bawas in the May elections.