THE Commission on Elections has started to decrypt and print the ballot images from three pilot provinces that former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cited in his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.
The Presidential Electoral Tribunal had earlier ordered the Comelec to do so using the Secured Digital (SD) cards from the provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental at its main office in Intramuros, Manila.
“Decryption is the process of decoding the data which has been encrypted into a secret format. Only an authorized user can decrypt data because decryption requires a secret key or password,” a Comelec official explained.
The former senator sought the recount of ballots in 25 provinces nationwide, but particularly noted that Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental would clearly show the “major discrepancies” in the votes cast in the ballots and those transmitted by the vote counting machines and reported in the certificates of canvass.
The Marcos camp said the Comelec denied Robredo’s motion to postpone the decryption, but a lawyer for the vice president denied there was any such motion.
“We deny making such motion we have made no such motion and there was no attempt to delay the proceeding on our part. The official record of the proceedings will speak for itself,” she said.