Poll watchdog warns of cheating, disenfranchisement

THE COMMISSION on Elections may have opened more avenues for cheating and disenfranchisement that could result in massive vote rigging on May 9, election watchdog Kontra Daya said Tuesday.

Kontra Daya convenor Dr. Giovanni Tapang said the Comelec move allowing the physical delivery of memory cards from the precincts to the canvassing centers raised scenarios of “modern-day” ballot box snatching.

The memory cards, which contain the election returns, could be stolen or replaced to affect the results while in transit to the canvassing centers, Tapang told reporters in a briefing.

“Without the digital signing safety feature in place, the canvassing centers would integrate the results of the [memory] cards brought to it,” he said.

The Comelec should have addressed the issue of poor signal and geography instead of resorting to this strategy, he added.

To address fears of snatching or manipulation of results, the Comelec would print a total of 30 election returns prior to the manual delivery of the memory cards to the municipal halls, Chair Andres Bautista had said.

The Comelec would also upload the results of each precinct to a website to allow voters to view and add up the results on their own, he added.

For this year’s elections, the Comelec has set a target of 90 percent of the more than 92,000 polling precincts to transmit election results, hoping to improve its rate of 76 percent in 2013.