Group seeks Comelec assurance spare poll machines won’t be used for cheating

A poll watchdog on Friday asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to give an assurance that the more than 6,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines would not be used to cheat in the May automated polls. The Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections (Compact), a network of non-government organizations and social movements, asked the poll body in a two-page letter to divulge the location of the more than 6,000 spares of the 82,000 PCOS units to be used in May and open them to public scrutiny. "It is important for the public to be able to keep a close watch on the people in charge of the spare machines to ensure that no monkey business is being transacted by these machines from behind the scenes," said Compact co-convener Etta Rosales. Rosales, a former partylist Akbayan representative, said this should be done because there is no way to check where results are coming from, or whether the results are being transmitted to the central canvassing system (CCS) are actual results from actual counting machines. "Where's the spare? Where did they come from? Where will they be deployed? More importantly, who's guarding these machines?" she said. But Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said that personnel from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and watchers from the political parties are expected to guard the machines. He likewise said that there will be a final testing and sealing of the PCOS machines, making it hard to manipulate them. "Not just anybody can monkey around with a PCOS," he told reporters in an interview on Tuesday. Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, for his part, said that the voting machines may not be easily used by just anybody. "It's in the system, the system is designed in such a way all the precincts are programmed into the CCS... even if you have a PCOS, if it's not programmed into the system, wala rin," he said. The first PCOS machines were deployed to the Kalayaan Islands. Earlier, Compact had also asked the poll body to to come up with a way that would allow voters to validate their votes on election day. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV