Poll lawyer refutes claims PCOS machines can be used to rig 2013 poll results

Atty. Romeo Macalintal. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Stop sowing fear that the 2013 elections will be marred by irregularities due to the glitches in Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, an election lawyer said Thursday.

Attorney Romulo Macalintal said such claims remain unfounded.

Macalintal said that to date, those people claiming that the 2010 PCOS machines have defects or could be manipulated have failed to provide concrete proof that the 2010 election results were rigged. This, he said is the reason why no election protest involving the 2010 elections had been successfully pursued.

“The only way by which PCOS results could be manipulated or cheated is when there is actual terrorism or violence inside a particular precinct or area where the ballots are prepared by armed men who fed them into the PCOS machines.  But this does not only happen in an automated election but also in any form of election, be it manual or automated.  And the remedy of the aggrieved party is to file a petition to declare a failure of election or annul the results of the election in the said precinct,” he said.

On Wednesday, Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said he believed the computerized voting machines successfully used in the 2010 elections were flawed and he wanted them thoroughly examined before these are used in next year’s midterm elections.

Palma echoed the opinion of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III that the voting machines are not perfect.

Pimentel, meanwhile, called on the country’s computer experts to join the hunt for glitches in the source codes that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will use in the machines.

“Unless their claim of PCOS defects could be proven with precision that they could affect the results of the elections, it is the responsibility of those “election experts” in information technology to encourage the electorate to trust our electoral system instead of sowing fear that the 2013 elections will be marred with such unfounded claim of fraud and irregularities,” Macalintal stressed.