More questions for Comelec to answer

I had to do this column mid-morning before I voted. But already, we are getting so many reports of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines getting bogged down or outright broken. I just hope that this is not a trend. But at this point, what can you expect from these second-hand machines which the Comelec purchased at a ridiculously expensive price, which at that time Dominion Voting Systems did not even include the source code? So the question begging for an answer is, “Why did Chairman Brillantes pay P400 for the source code when my understanding of this purchase included the source code in that package?”

If you ask me, after the dust of this elections are over, it is high time for a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigation into why the Comelec purchased the PCOS machines in the first place. Come to think of it, if you were a techie person and you had a 2007 cellphone, for sure by now you must have purchased a new one.

The Comelec rightly leased the PCOS machines for the 2010 elections… three years after this, the Comelec purchased those machines when they could have outsourced another system that works much better than the PCOS machines. Methinks that someone made a great deal of money in that purchase and for sure, the taxpayers footed the bill!

At this point, I hope and pray that there will be no failure of elections even if the election returns no longer have the digital signatures as required by law. There is also no authentication of ballots whether they are official or fake and no vote verification. And the source code? We’ll apparently there are reports surfacing in the social media networks that the Comelec photo showing a Dominion Voting official may just have been a low functionary and not high up in the officialdom of Dominion Voting Systems. Remember this company was only founded in Canada in the year 2002.

The big question begging for an answer is why did we lease the PCOS machines for a humongous sum of P7.2 billion in 2010? Did anyone scrutinize this lease and why it cost the taxpayers so much? The Social media networks are saying that the PCOS machines are really old and used in the year 2002. Again, after the elections, it is time for a massive investigation on this purchase, where even the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Comelec.

Finally the Automated Election System (AES) checked out the Internet for business intel reports regarding a settlement of a court suit in the Delaware District Court, if there really was a settlement between Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems… and they found no such reports. This case gets curiouser and curiouser everyday.

In the news reports, Chairman Brillantes was with Senior Test Manager Michael Santos of SLI Global Solutions turning over the Source Code to Engineering Manager Reed Bodwell of Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. to ensure that it is the same source code that was reviewed and certified. But as AES checked things out, there is no Reed Bodwell in the Dominion Voting management list. So the question is, is all this a charade? We’ll soon find out.

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Still on the elections. Last week, I featured on my TV talkshow a group that calls itself the Fully Abled Nation (FAN) sponsored by Australian Aid, who with the Volunteer Services Organization (VSO) came up with a project that would help Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) to register for the 2013 elections and to get out and vote. This noble project aims to create a special desk for PWDs so finding their precincts on Election Day would not longer be a painstaking experience. My sister Adela Kono is disabled and I know how difficult it is for her to vote at the 3rd floor of Normal University.

However, days before the elections, Kenneth Sotto, Project Officer of VSO Bahagiran and John Paul Maunes, Executive Director Gualandi Volunteer Services informed me that no less than Comelec Commissioner Grace Padaca who is the person in charge of PWDs in the Comelec because she herself is a PWD pulled the plug on this project, saying that there were really not that much PWDs who are voters.

I really don’t know why Grace Padaca reacted in this manner when she is supposed to assist her own PWD sector. If she only checked out the listing in the Comelec, thanks to the Fully Abled Nation (FAN) project, in Cebu Province alone, from the 511 PWD voters in 2010 elections, this figure has ballooned to 12,608 voters in the Province of Cebu alone. Just imagine that the Fully Abled Nation Project is a nationwide project… it would have easily reached a hundred thousand voters. At this point, FAN is still collating the information from all the precincts. But all I can say is, Election Day for PWDs was still the same painstaking way it used to be, even with a PWD named Grace Padaca, who should have helped her disabled sector. Shame!

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