University of the Philippines Online Observer: ERAP STILL REFUSING TO CONCEDE / 3 LOSING PRESIDENTIAL BETS TROOP TO SC

In a presentation at the University of the Philippines, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPeg) said several problems in the implementation of the country’s first automated elections have made the exercise vulnerable to fraud.

CenPeg director for policy studies Bobby Tuazon said the elections were flawed from the beginning when the security features of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines were disabled.

CenPeg IT consultant Pablo Manalastas said the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that it only used election returns from consolidated precincts that used the memory cards that passed field testing and sealing.

There have been allegations that there were pre-programmed memory cards used during the elections.

A week before the May 10 elections, memory cards for the PCOS machines were found defective. Smartmatic-TIM, which was contracted by the Comelec to provide the machines, immediately recalled the cards distributed to polling precincts nationwide and replaced them in a week.

CenPeg said several precincts also failed to transmit the results electronically, forcing the board of election inspectors to bring the memory cards or even the PCOS machines to the municipal canvassing centers.

From: http://ping.fm/VP5v8