DEPUTY Speaker Rufus Rodriguez urged the House of Representatives on Tuesday to conduct an investigation into the reported malfunctioning of several vote-counting machines (VCMs) nationwide.
According to Rodriguez, defective VCMs and secure digital (SD) or memory cards resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters.
In a statement, Rodriguez said that “We owe it to our voters to investigate these reports and recommend remedial measures, either via legislation or administrative sanctions or penalties to be imposed by the Commission on Elections on responsible personnel and/or its automation service provider, Smartmatic.”
Rodriguez ordered the election body to disclose to the public the number of VCMs that failed, the polling locations where the defective equipment was deployed, the actions taken along with a timeline, and the number of impacted voters.
“The Comelec and its automation contractor have not resolved these issues. There has to be a solution,” he stressed.
Despite the success on the voting process on May 9, Rodriguez could not comprehend why so many vote-counting machines and SD cards failed, since the devices were supposed to have been inspected for defects a few days earlier.
He noted allegations that several VCMs did not operate as early as the first hour of voting in various areas in Quezon City.
He further stated that it took six hours for Comelec personnel to replace them, but when the new machines arrived at the polling centers soon after lunch on Monday, poll workers discovered that their memory cards were “corrupted”.
Rodriguez mentioned that Comelec personnel had to get new SD cards from the poll body’s warehouse in Laguna, which took at least 12 hours up to early this morning and forced affected voters to spend the night at their polling centers in order to vote.
“Our voters should not go through this sad, unfortunate and totally avoidable experience again in future elections,” he said.
