MANILA, Philippines—A “technical explanation” on the glitch in the transparency server that happened on election day is underway, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said as it noted that the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) finds no fraud in the election system.
Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez issued the statement after the PPCRV called on the poll body to explain the supposed data “bottleneck” which caused a seven-hour delay in the release of election results to the transparency server.
READ: Comelec must explain data bottleneck, says PPCRV
“I think a technical explanation is being prepared for that. ‘Yung all of the fears na sinasabi ay wala naman basis. What they [PPCRV] are saying is walang naging problema sa transmission, walang nawala,” Jimenez said in a press briefing Tuesday.
“It’s just that now they have this issue, explain the bottlenecks. Given na walang naging problema, still explain the bottlenecks,” he added.
A seven-hour glitch occurred after voting precincts closed at 6 p.m. on election day which caused doubts on the integrity of the May midterm elections.
READ: Comelec transparency server glitch delays release of partial poll results
The PPCRV, which has been granted access to election data to look into the reported glitch, found out that data in the transparency server matched the data scraped from the poll body’s public access website.
READ: Comelec grants PPCRV request for transparency server’s audit logs
READ: Comelec vouches for VCMs; PPCRV audit shows ‘nothing unusual’
Jimenez also noted that it was the first time they have encountered the problem since it was also the first time that they had made use of FTP or file transfer protocol.
In the past automated elections, the Comelec used a USB stick to transfer data from the transparency server.
However, the poll official assured that FTP is the more secure way of transferring election data.
“FTP was considered the superior solution. Ang problema nga lang is using the FTP has caused the bottlenecks,” Jimenez said. (Editor: Mike U. Frialde)