Sotto bares more ‘irregularities’ in 2016 polls

Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III on Wednesday bared more alleged irregularities that he said may put to question the integrity of the 2016 automated elections.

In his second privilege speech on the subject, Sotto questioned the utilization of the "queuing servers" in the middle of the transmission of votes cast for the 2016 polls.

"I am not saying that this is the most relevant among [the issues I have raised] since all matters challenging the integrity of our elections is a national concern. But, in my opinion, this last blow was the one that really tainted the outcome of the elections," he said.

He said the process of transmission during the peak period on May 9 to 10 was the vote counting machines will ask for the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the recipient from the Domain Name Server (DNS) so it can transmit the data.

All vote-counting machine queries were communicated only to one server, CNTADNS Server. The recipients are the Municipal/City Board of Canvassers, Provincial/Regional Board of Canvassers, Transparency Servers ,and the Central Servers.

"Suddenly, on May 10 to 11, the rules changed in the middle of the game," Sotto said.

He said transmissions from the vote-counting machines did not go straight to the Consolidating Canvassing System (CCS) but instead went through either one of the four "queuing servers" before reaching the CCS.

"By then, two servers are now involved in the process. This additional Server CNTBDNSO1 is now communicating with the queries of the VCMs after it has gone to queuing," Sotto said.

He wondered how relevant and crucial the queuing server is that the engineers were willing to risk a possible data loss or crashing of an ongoing system, by installing a new device in the middle of the transmission process.

"As we can see, despite having these queuing servers, the results were still not equal among all servers," he said.

He cited a report of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) for the 2016 elections that said the automated election system was undermined due to the intrusion to the transparency server while the system was actively receiving electronic transmissions.

Sotto said the report mentioned the presence of a "fourth server" located at a previously undisclosed location.

He said according to Namfrel, the use of the queue server was only discovered in 2016 from the admission of Smartmatic project director Marlon Garcia during the preliminary investigation conducted by the Manila Prosecutor’s Office for a case filed by former Rep. Jonathan de la Cruz.

"Why install such (queuing server) on May 10 to 11 only? The transmissions made after the elections on May 9-10 went well, I suppose, without this queuing servers. Also, the bulk of the transmissions happened on May 9-10. If indeed these queuing servers are of any help then these should have been there from the beginning," said Sotto.

He said he does not believe that the servers were kind of a back-up system because the engineers know the bandwiths and data capacity from the start.

"This cannot be a last minute decision. This second server has been set up and ready to be plugged at the last stretch of the transmission phase. Can the Comelec provide us with a resolution showing that this second server was also tested? Because as far as I know, there is no second server in the Comelec issued process,” he said.

Sotto also questioned the establishment of seven regional hubs of the Comelec, where malfunctioning vote counting machines are being brought to be fixed and SD cards to be changed before being delivered back to the precincts.

He called on those criticizing his concerns and offering excuses not to meddle with the issue and just submit the logs he earlier exposed. "Nothing is left to discuss except in a full blown Senate inquiry," he said.

The matter was referred to the Committee on Electoral Reforms and People's Participation. —KBK, GMA News