Explain
This is the statement of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) to the Commission on Elections, with regards to the seven-hour delay in the transmission of data to the transparency servers. The transparency server is the server shared with the PPCRV, media, and political parties, to monitor the vote count. For seven hours, no data was transmitted to the servers. It started out fine, then nothing. For lack of a better term, “Anyare?”
According to the Comelec, there was a bottleneck caused by the file transfer manager, due to a deluge of results coming in from all over the country. The file transfer manager puts the results on the board. The Comelec seems to be saying that because of the sheer volume of data coming in from all over the country, there was “traffic”. Perhaps an analogy would be vehicles on EDSA suddenly have to pass through a road that can only accept one lane of vehicles, hence the “traffic.” This is the explanation of the Comelec, albeit later in the day. But questions still abound.
It is difficult to understand this explanation at a time of modern technology. I’m no IT expert, but I do wonder how such a bottleneck could happen. If there indeed was a bottleneck, why did the majority of the data suddenly come in after seven hours? If there was a bottleneck, then the data should have still trickled through. If we go back to the EDSA analogy, the single lane suddenly opens up into a ten-lane highway where everyone could pass, all at the same time. And if that is the explanation, why did it not happen in the past three automated elections?
PPCRV has yet to see evidence of anomalies or fraud. Nobody is saying that cheating occurred. Many are actually saying the 2019 election is by far the smoothest. Still, the Comelec needs to explain why the bottleneck even happened. Seven hours is a long time which can make anyone start thinking. In the words of Sen. JV Ejercito, “dapat di matulog pag bilangan.” If the count was done manually, ballot boxes or election returns not coming in after seven hours would be very suspicious. With the advent of fast internet and modern communications technology, citing a bottleneck as the reason for the delay seems a little difficult to accept.
- Latest
