SC urged to prevent erasure of 2022 election results

Several individuals on Thursday filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to prevent the erasure of the transmitted results of the 2022 national elections.

The petition was filed by former Information and Communications Technology undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr., National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) acting chairperson Augusto Lagman, and lawyer Franklin Ysaac.

Respondents named were the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Smartmatic Total Information Management, DITO Telecommunity, Globe Telecom, and Smarts Communications.

The petitioners asked the High Tribunal to issue a temporary restraining order enjoining the respondents to cease and desist from any act that may modify, erase, or delete any part or whole of the subscriber, cyber traffic data log integrity, or call record details corresponding to the elections that were transmitted from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. of May 9.

It also called on the Court to direct the telecommunication companies to deliver copies of their respective records or details of the data directly and exclusively to the Court and to enjoin the respondents to preserve the data.

Meanwhile, Rio questioned the transmitted results of 1,525,637 votes at 7:17 p.m. on May 9, 17 minutes after the voting closed at 7 pm.

Citing Comelec, he said that it takes at least 13 seconds to print each voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT).

“It would take at least 30 minutes, after the last voter [cast] his/her vote after closing time, to officially close the voting, set up the VCM for printing, print eight copies of the ER… affixing the signatures of the teachers on each and every ER set… and then give some time for the poll watchers to scrutinize the printed ER,” he said.

“Then and only then can the ER be transmitted electronically to the transparency server… The earliest transmission then would occur after 7:30 p.m. It is therefore impossible for the transparency server to have shown the public 1.5M votes by 7:17 p.m.,” he added.

The 100-page petition was posted on Ysaac’s Facebook page.

For its part, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) welcomed the filing of the petition, saying this will allow all parties to respond.

“The COMELEC Rules of Procedure, as well as the Rules on Civil Procedure (Rules of Court), provide for the proper avenues by which these may be properly ventilated within the ambit of due processes of law and public order,” Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco said.

“This is a much welcome development wherein all parties, including the COMELEC, will be able to conclusively respond to all issues under judicial processes,” he added.

Comelec chief George Garcia has previously said that he will look into contracts with telecommunication companies to see if they can provide their call detail records.—AOL, GMA News