The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday said election results will be transmitted after the end of voting hours for the May 12 polls.
Comelec chairman George Erwin Garcia said this is to address fears of hacking and allegations of premature transmission of poll results.
“The machines cannot transmit the results to the PPCRV, NAMFREL, majority and minority parties, the Comelec central server, media server, and canvassing centers before 7 p.m.,” Garcia said.
“It is programmed this way, and all the servers and consolidation systems used will not accept the election results before 7 p.m.,” he added.
The poll body commissioned the South Korean firm Miru Systems for the P17.99 billion automated election system (AES) for the upcoming polls, including the lease of 110,000 new automated counting machines (ACMs).
Garcia reiterated that the ACMs have new features for the elections, including a three-day battery life.
He also said the ACMs will print the election returns (ERs) before transmitting the results to election servers, including those allocated for election watchdogs, majority and minority parties, and canvassing boards.
“There will never be hacking because, in order to hack, there must be no available copy yet. Now, a copy is immediately available even before the results are transmitted,” Garcia stressed.
“We emphasize that all images of the ballots are visible to all watchers.
Once the transmission, counting, and printing of ERs are completed and copies are distributed to everyone, we will show them one by one to all watchers, allowing them to take pictures and videos of all the ballot images. These features are new,” he said.
