AN ELECTION watchdog on Wednesday urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to make public data generated by the automated election system during the 2022 elections after lawmakers called for a probe of alleged anomalies in the automated polls.
“The National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) believes that the issues raised are rooted in the non-transparent automated election system and the lack of transparency in its implementation,” Namfrel said in a statement.
Citing its own report of last year’s elections, the watchdog said it did not find any evidence that there were fabricated election results or anomalous election returns, but still called on the Comelec to “make publicly available the transmission logs of the three telecommunications service providers, as well as other automated election systems, generated election data.”
On Wednesday, House minority lawmakers filed a resolution calling for a probe of the alleged anomalies, citing assertions made by former Information and Communications Technology Secretary Eliseo M. Rio, Jr. who had said the elections might have been rigged since the votes were transmitted on one private internet protocol (IP) address.
Comelec Chairman George Erwin M. Garcia told a briefing on July 27 that the election body owned the IP address, adding that the election results were accurate. — John Victor D. Ordoñez
