MANILA — On election day, May 12, John Rivamonte, 38, arrived early at polling center Tomas Morato Elementary School in Quezon City to vote and avoid the long lines. After casting his vote and inserting his ballot in the new automated counting machine, he reviewed the receipt that the machine printed and was surprised that one entry shows ‘overvote’.

Rivamonte immediately questioned what was written on the receipt and called the attention of the teachers who also served as electoral board about the result in his ballot receipt and demanded if there’s a way to check why the entry of his vote for the district representative showed that he overvoted.

“Common sense tells you to vote for only one. I was very careful not to smudge the ballot or overvote, but that’s what came out on the receipt,” Rivamonte lamented when he walked out of the precinct.

Unfortunately, members of the electoral board could not do anything but check his receipt, explain that they cannot open the ballot box to check his ballot, list down his name and complaint, and assure him that they will try to look for his ballot when the precinct closes.

“There are around 700 voters in this precinct so it will be difficult to search for his ballot later to confirm if he did indeed overvote because there are no serial numbers on the ballot,” said Carla Gonzales, the electoral board chairperson of the precinct.

Rivamonte’s case is just one of the 80 overvote cases documented by VoteReportPH, along with several others reported by voters on their social media pages.

Read: Voters frustrated over accidental ‘overvote’ cases

In VoteReportPH’s May 13 report, 50 percent of the reports they verified are ACM errors where “voters commonly cite ink smudging, overly sensitive scanners, and a high incidence of overvotes as recurring problems.”

Transparency Issues

Election watchdog Kontra Daya questioned the integrity of this year’s elections due to the Comelec’s lack of transparency and its failure to address widespread malfunctions.

“These are not isolated cases. The problem with ACM errors was widespread, and even Chairperson George Garcia himself said that around 200 machines had to be replaced,” said Danilo Arao, convener of Kontra Daya. “We should view disenfranchisement not just as a numbers game. Whether it’s a few or many, if people are being disenfranchised, it is a problem.”

Arao added that the deeper issue lies in the lack of clarity on what software version was actually running on the machines.

Read: Groups raise alarm over ‘uncertified’ automated counting machines software update

“If you don’t know what kind of software is installed in the automated counting machine, it’s difficult to determine if it could be used for electronic cheating,” he said.

According to VoteReportPH, Comelec published a certification for software version 3.4, but the final testing and sealing process showed that the machines were running version 3.5 with a different hash code, a key digital fingerprint that should match if no changes were made.

“The Comelec gave three different explanations,” said Aragoza. “First, they said the version number was just renamed. Then they said version 3.5 was audited. Then later, they said it was based on a source code review. That inconsistency alone destroys public confidence.”

Data discrepancies and ‘cleaning’

Adding to public skepticism was a moment on the Comelec’s website when the number of ballots cast briefly exceeded the number of actual voters.

“For data analysts, this is a major red flag. You can’t just dismiss it as a machine error,” said Aragoza.

Read: Ballots cast exceed voters who voted, IT group raises alarm over ‘discrepancies’

In a press conference on the morning of May 13, Comelec’s Garcia downplayed the concerns of transmission issues and duplicate data received.

“The Comelec website has had no interruptions; it is continuously operating. Currently, our website is receiving 98.75%,” Garcia said.

“The only issue is the discrepancy, because, of course, the central server of Comelec always receives the data first, but they receive it almost at the same time and with the same data,” he said, referring to parallel servers of the citizen watchdog, media, and parties.

“There’s no addition or subtraction of votes, no shading. It’s just a matter of corrections being made,” he added, addressing the concerns over the decrease of votes noticed in media servers early morning of May 13.

However, election watchdogs argued that without public access to raw data or transparency on the system architecture, such corrections cannot be independently verified.

“When you ‘clean’ official election data without releasing the raw files, you remove the possibility of independent verification,” Aragoza said. “That’s a problem.”

VoteReportPH also observed that the vote-counting process is now almost entirely dependent on the machines, which removes any fallback in the case of machine failure or error.

“You can’t vote in this country anymore without going through a machine. And when those machines malfunction or can’t be questioned, that’s a systemic flaw,” Aragoza said.

Call for manual count, legal remedies

Kontra Daya and other poll watchdogs are now calling for legislative and judicial reviews of the automated election system, and are exploring the possibility of filing cases against Comelec.

Arao said that they are not asking for full manual elections but hybrid elections to ensure transparency in the process of vote counting.

“If the Comelec refuses to disclose the correct data and source code, the public’s doubt only grows stronger, whether our votes are truly being counted, or if something else is happening behind the machines,” Arao said.

Disclosure: Danilo Arao is Bulatlat’s associate editor.