Comelec assures public of credible results despite glitch

May 14, 2019

The Commission on Elections ( Comelec) on Tuesday assured the public of credible results even after their transparency server faced several glitches.

“We want to make sure the public that results are not affected,” Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said in a press briefing.

Casquejo said the hour-hour delay with the transparency server after they released the partial and unofficial result last night is due to the flock of data received by their application which caused it to hang.

He said for this year, they used a FTP ( file transfer program) application which received the results from their transparency server. This is sent to the local servers.

“This FTP application is entirely separate of the transparency server so it won’t affect the transparency server,” said Casquejo.

“When it was reported to us in the en banc, we had a meeting allowing the team of transparency server to look into the data logs… They did not see any errors and it was transmitting reports,” he said.

Casquejo said the team recommended manual gathering of results last 2016 but there will be implications with the Data Privacy Act.

He said the transparency server still receives report from the vote counting machines.

“So they suspect again that the select mode had a problem so they just reset the select mode (of the application) and open the gate again causing it to receive data,” he explained.

With regards to the error in the vote turnouts reflected in their transparency server early Tuesday, Casquejo explained it was caused by a “Java error” and they just restart the app again to solve the problem.

It was reported that around 5 am Tuesday, total election returns rose from 49.76 percent from the previous 92.89 percent.

“It did not slow down nor decrease. It was a technical glitch of the FTP app,” he said.

“Again, we want to assure the public that the FTP app is separate from the transparency server and will not affect the results,” Casquejo reiterated.

“Well, despite those glitches… we can say that the election is successful. In fact we are on the 96 percent transmission compared to past elections," he said.

Casquejo said he is proposing to the en banc that all audit and system logs will be shared to the public.

“Just to make sure that nothing happens in the transparency server. I am proposing to the commission en banc that all the audit logs and system logs of the transparency server including the FTP app will be share, given to our local servers, media if they want,” said Casquejo.

“So that they can assess, see the audit log of the transparency server if there is really a decrease or slowdown of transmission… just to make sure there is no anomaly,” he said.

As of 2 pm, the National Board of Canvassers convened. So far they have received complete transmission of votes in Ifugao province. Ella Dionisio/DMS