By Ellson Quismorio
Poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) may now attempt to get to the bottom of the seven-hour glitch that the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec’s) transparency server experienced right after the May 13 midterm polls.
PPRCV Chair Myla Villanueva says Comelec has granted them access to the logs of the transparency server. She said this will allow the poll watchdog's IT experts to analyze the logs and find out what happened during the seven-hour glitch of the transparency server last May 13. (ELLSON QUISMORIO / MANILA BULLETIN)
PPCRV Chairperson Myla Villanueva bared that Comelec – as per her meeting with Commissioner Marlon Casquejo – has granted the group access to the logs of the apparatus.
“The good news is we're going to get the logs of the transparency server,” a beaming Villanueva told reporters at the PPCRV command center in Manila.
“Our IT (information technology) team will be going to work over the weekend so that we can analyze the logs...we will find out what happened to the machine during the evening of May 13,” she said.
It was recalled that the Comelec's transparency server failed to transmit voting results following its initial output on Election Day. The glitch lasted seven hours, drawing flak for the poll body.
“We want to know the root cause of what happened so that I won't be repeated in the next elections.
“Also, it is important for the public to know if the issue was technical. If it's technical, talaga naman pong nagkaka-aberya ang mga makina (it's normal for machines to bog down) and we just want to know that yun lang po (that's it), nothing more and nothing less,” Villanueva explained.
Asked how much time their IT experts would need to arrive at a conclusion regarding the logs, Villanueva said that the team would work the entire weekend.
She went on to praise Comelec for being very helpful to the Church-backed PPCRV. “ no conditions. In fairness to Comelec, they've been very transparent with us. Whatever we ask for, binibigay naman (they give it to us).”
Villanueva noted that they've made one more request to Comelec – that of a copy of the data of the central server – but acknowledged that it would take some time before it could be granted.
“I understand that we have to wait because we have to complete yung pagtanggap ng central server... So I understand if it will take a little longer,” she said.
Once on hand, data from Comelec's central server will be compared to the data from the transparency server, with hopes of matching both sets of figures to each other.
ERs pour in
Within the command center are volunteers who manually encode printed copies of election returns (ER) so they may be compared to the electronically-transmitted results of the senatorial and party-list race.
Villanueva bared in the same interview that they've already received 17,828 physical ERs from all over the country.
“Our match rate has been going up to 99.98 percent,” she said.
In an earlier interview Thursday, PPCRV Media Director Agnes Gervacio said they will have received more than 20 percent of the total ERs before the day was over. The total ER arrival at the command center was pegged at only 10 percent Wednesday.