Pimentel says poll glitches call for Senate probe; Sotto wants Smartmatic out

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III raised Tuesday the possibility of a Senate probe amid glitches that marred the voting process and electronic transmission of election results to the transparency server.

“Glitches are enough to call for a congressional investigation. Why are we still having all these glitches? Cannot Comelec (Commission on Elections) anticipate them?” Pimentel said in a text message to reporters.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said “it's about time we stop using Smartmatic,” referring to the supplier of vote counting machines.

Senator Risa Hontiveros, meanwhile, called on the poll body to fully explain the reasons behind the malfunction of VCMs and disclose the number of voters disenfranchised as a result of the setback.

“This is our fourth automated elections. Mishaps like this, especially those that deprive our people of the right to suffrage, are unacceptable,” she said.

Some 1,000 SD cards had issues during election day resulting in the malfunction of vote counting machines.

The unofficial count was delayed after the application responsible for pushing out the results from the Commission on Elections' (Comelec) transparency server to third-party organizations suffered a glitch on Monday shortly after the polls closed.

Another error early Tuesday caused a dip in the transparency survey results. The number of election returns processed was already at 92.89 percent as of 5:20 a.m. but this went down to 49.76 percent at around 6:21 a.m.

Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said this was merely a "java error," and that it affected all media networks and organizations sourcing data from the transparency server. — MDM, GMA News