{"id":175462,"date":"2018-08-07T02:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T06:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=175462"},"modified":"2018-08-07T02:57:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T06:57:23","slug":"sotto-finds-smartmatics-answer-n-unacceptable-unbelievable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/08\/07\/sotto-finds-smartmatics-answer-n-unacceptable-unbelievable\/","title":{"rendered":"Sotto finds Smartmatic’s answer on \u2018\u00f1\u2019 \u2018unacceptable, unbelievable\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cLet Smartmatic answer. To other people, Comelec seemed to be the lawyer for Smartmatic. Most of the questions should be answered by them (since) the guy who made the \u2018\u00f1\u2019 thing came from Smartmatic,\u201d Sotto said. (File photo: PNA\/ Avito C. Dalan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Monday described the answers of Smartmatic on the issue of the character \u201c\u00f1\u201d that was suddenly changed in the middle of the counting and canvassing of votes during the 2016 national elections \u201cunacceptable\u201d and \u201cunbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue of the questionable character was raised against the provider of the automated election system (AES) during the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the AES after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) could not satisfactorily answer why Smartmatic changed the computer script of the transparency server in mid-count.<\/p>\n

The Comelec earlier confirmed that the script of the transparency server was tweaked, but only to correct a character in the names of candidates with “\u00f1” in them.<\/p>\n

Sotto prodded Smartmatic representatives to answer after a question was raised why the poll body did not foresee the problems that may arise from the character replacement in the election process.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet Smartmatic answer. To other people, Comelec seemed to be the lawyer for Smartmatic. Most of the questions should be answered by them (since) the guy who made the \u2018\u00f1\u2019 thing came from Smartmatic,\u201d Sotto said.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfix\u201d was supposedly done by Marlon Garcia, the head of the Smartmatic technical support team at the time.<\/p>\n

Smartmatic project director Pravir Dahiya admitted to the JCOC-AES that they do not know the specific issue on the character in question.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of knowing the error itself of the \u2018\u00f1,\u2019 we were not aware. We would admit it as an oversight that is something that could only be detected during the process,\u201d Dahiya said.<\/p>\n

Sotto said he found this unacceptable and unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot accept that it can only be found during the process. Filing of certificates of candidacies were in October and there were many candidates nationwide with \u2018\u00f1\u2019 in their names,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom October to May.. you only found out in May during the counting that there is something wrong with a letter? It\u2019s unbelievable! So that you can open the transparency servers? We cannot accept that!\u201d Sotto said.<\/p>\n

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III also pointed out that there were field tests and a mock election months before the actual polls.<\/p>\n

Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino initially explained that the \u201c\u00f1\u201d is not part of the three main source codes related to the counting, canvassing and consolidation of votes, but is rather inn the transparency server.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018\u00f1\u2019 is not connected to the CCS (Consolidated Canvassing System). It is at the transparency server whose only function is to get advanced unofficial results. Any script made there (transparency server) will not affect our elections,\u201d Tolentino said.<\/p>\n

However, Philippine Computer Society director Edmundo Casi\u00f1o said the insertion of \u201d\u00f1\u201d in the middle of a live transmission is a clear violation of the automated elections law.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t do that in a live transmission or production run because that is direct tampering,\u201d Casi\u00f1o said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Monday described the answers of Smartmatic on the issue of the character …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":173339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-jose-cielito-reganit","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}