PPCRV: Comelec should explain ‘bottleneck’ that delayed poll update

MANILA, Philippines — The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Monday said the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should explain the ‘bottleneck’ that led to the seven-hour delay in updating poll results on election day.

PPCRV chairperson Myla Villanueva said the transparency server’s file transfer manager, which was supposed to transmit data from the server to the PPCRV and the media, failed to complete its duty.

This, Villanueva said, led to the delay in updating the tally boards of the PPCRV and media outlets, despite the continuous transmission of results.

“When we looked at it, we saw that there was a job, the job it needed to get done to transfer the data to us and that file transfer manager was not completing the job,” Villanueva said.

She explained that the Comelec handles the file transfer manager; hence, the poll body should explain the reason behind the incident.

“The PPCRV is not in a position to declare or conclude why the bottleneck happened; we can only say that the bottleneck happened,” Villanueva said.

“We have to ask the Comelec to continue to explain to the public why it happened because they own the server, they own the environment, and they are in the best position to open up all the details in that given point in time,” she added.

Villanueva said the PPCRV had sent a report to the Comelec regarding their observation on the transparency server’s audit logs.

“We did submit it (report) via email at noontime today, and they should be looking at it. There’s [also] a simple version that is easier to understand,” Villanueva said.

The PPCRV chairman said they could not confirm if there was a manipulation of data during the delay, but she said the transmission was continuous and the data in the transparency server matched with the central server.

READ: PPCRV confirms ‘bottleneck’ caused 7-hour delay in updating poll results

Comelec earlier blamed the delay of the election results to a case of ‘bottleneck.’

Election Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said the system involving the Comelec transparency server and the data being sent to media networks got overwhelmed by the deluge of transmitted results.
Comelec, however, has yet to respond to PPCRV’s latest report.

READ: Comelec blames ‘bottleneck’ for 7-hour server delay

Continued verification

Villanueva said that they will continue verifying election results through the encoding of election returns which will be compared to the results in the transparency server.

“That’s an additional layer that will give us a better conclusion if may nangyayari nga (if an incident happened) during the transmission,” Villanueva said. (Editor: Eden Estopace)