The past week was very interesting with losing candidates complaining of election fraud
caused by the alleged reprogramming of the PCOS machines. The supposed proof of such
fraud are the dates and times on the PCOS machines not matching exactly with actual
dates, and the ‘koala bear’ witness who claimed he was involved in the election fraud. One
candidate claimed that there is fraud because the random manual audit did not match with
PCOS count on 4 out of 5 machines but he wouldn’t say how much discrepancy was there.
Another claimed that transmissions of the results were intercepted and a different set of
results was transmitted.
While such allegations are easy to make, the evidence of such alleged cheating should be
presented at the proper forum. Also, they should take into consideration that a potential
evidence, like the incorrect dates recorded, cannot be refuted. Even if the dates are not
exactly correct, if the results submitted matched the election returns, then there is no
cheating. The dates on the PCOS machines may not have been set to the exact time but
its primary purpose is to record the sequence of events and in that case, it doesn’t need the
exact dates because you only need to know how long is the period between events.
Reprogramming the PCOS machines would require highly technical skills and such
reprogramming has to be done in a very short period of time. Any one trying to do this
must have deep pockets, close contacts with COMELEC and Smartmatic, PNP and military
and are able to corrupt the volunteers of the PPCRV, pole watchers and BEI so that they
be allowed to tinker with the PCOS machines. Smartmatic would have no interest at all to
ruin their reputation by allowing themselves to be used by any candidate. Their business is
conducting elections in many countries and it would go against logic that they would try to
make a quick buck in the Philippines but risk their whole business.
The random manual audit is expected to have some variations compared to the PCOS
machine count but these discrepancies should be less than 1% which is the case so far
according to PPCRV. Simply saying 4 out of 5 PCOS machines had discrepancies can be
alarming, but if you say that 4 out of 5 PCOS machines have discrepances of less than 1%,
then that’s a different story. The people complaining of “massive” cheating need to undergo
some basic lessons in statistics. It is nearly impossible for any significant level of cheating
to be undetected by the random manual audit.
There might be issues in isolated cases but compared to overall, this should not be used to
undermine the credibility of the COMELEC, as what some losing candidates are doing. Such
actions are irresponsible and just creates unnecessary tension. In any election, there would
be losers and those who gracefully concede to the winners are highly appreciated by the
people.
If any fraud was committed, it would be the massive vote buying operations being done by
some candidates — and this type of fraud, can not be prevented by the PCOS machines, but
by the voters themselves.