The Commission on Elections is considering setting up an online system where the public can access the consolidated results of the May 10 elections as soon as they come in after polling ends at 6 p.m.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said the poll body is looking at several options to disseminate official and partial results of the automated elections.
One idea is to attach a page to the election results website that will be created by Smartmatic-TIM Corp., the Comelec’s automated elections supplier, he said.
“The election results website will contain precinct results. We might append a page to the website showing the latest consolidated results,” he said.
Jimenez said the secured election website that will be announced a day before the elections will contain the results from all the 76,000 polling precincts in the country.
The Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM will establish mirror sites to allow more people to access it, he said.
The Comelec will also periodically announce the results to the media covering the National Board of Canvassers at the Philippine International Convention Center, where Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM officials will be monitoring the elections.
A third option is to allow the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), the Comelec’s citizen arm, to have their own unofficial count based on the election returns that will be transmitted to their terminals from the precincts and canvassing centers, said Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal.
Tallies known in a day or 2
Larrazabal assured the public that the tallies will be known in a day or two.
“People will be kept abreast of what is happening. The information will be released every so often in the website and the servers of the dominant minority and majority parties,” he said.
“There is no lag of two days,” he said.
The servers of the canvassers at the municipal, provincial and national levels will be opened immediately at the end of the voting day at 6 p.m. to wait for the results to come in, he said.
In the PICC, Comelec officials said they will set up monitoring screens so that observers can see the results in real-time.
Liberal Party presidential candidate Sen. Benigno Aquino III on Friday urged the Comelec to hold manual elections in urban areas while ensuring that computerized elections are held in rural areas.
Aquino proposals
In a press conference in Lucena, Quezon, Aquino said that if the Comelec has no choice but to hold manual elections, it should be done in urban centers where the precincts are more accessible and where there are more eyes monitoring the process.
But rural elections should be automated to speed up the process, he said.
LP senatorial candidate Ralph Recto said the Comelec should conduct a parallel manual count of the votes to preserve the integrity of the ballot in case of serious glitches in the poll automation.
A parallel manual count would work to validate the results of the automated elections, “to dispel any allegation of fraud or manipulation,” he said.
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