The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will begin this weekend the investigation of the more than 900 vote-counting machines (VCMs) that encountered issues during the May 9 polls.
According to Commissioner George Garcia, the Comelec Steering Committee headed by Commissioner Marlon Casquejo will meet on Saturday with the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) and the Project Management Office (PMO) to discuss the matter.
He said the holding of the meeting is in response to the call of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte to investigate why the VCMs did not function during the elections.
Earlier, Duterte urged the Comelec to look into hundreds of VCMs that malfunctioned during the polls so as not to cast doubts on the integrity of the election results.
Meanwhile, Comelec acting spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco refused to further comment on the call of the chief executive to abolish the Party-list system.
According to the poll body official, the decision to scrap the party-list system is not the decision of the Commission but Congress.
“For as long as there is that law providing for the party-list system, we will comply with that,” the Comelec official added.
On Thursday, Duterte urged his would-be successor to scrap the party-list system.
On the other hand, poll watchdog Kontra Daya said it would be better to just amend the law.
Former Speaker and Taguig City Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano meanwhile called on the next administration to invest in digital infrastructure to make the country’s automated voting system more efficient and less prone to bog-downs.
Cayetano said improvements in the country’s fiber network, undersea communication cables and cell site density should be made part of a 5-year post-pandemic recovery plan to make the Philippines more “future-proof.”
These improvements will take much of the hassle off of automated elections, he said, as every election has seen thousands of vote-counting machines experiencing problems in transmitting results properly due to inadequate data coverage in many parts of the country.
He also said the polling body should consider getting more vote-counting machines to account for population increase since the first automated elections in 2010.
Cayetano pointed out that while automation has made vote counting in the Philippines faster, more needs to be done to reassure the public about the trustworthiness of the system in the long term.
