FORMER Department of Information and Communications Technology undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr. and several other individuals yesterday asked the Supreme Court to prevent the deletion of the transmission logs of the May 9, 2022 national and local elections.
In a 100-page petition for mandamus, Rio, National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) acting chairperson Augusto Lagman, and lawyer Franklin Ysaac asked the High Court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Smartmatic TIM and telecommunications companies Globe, Smart and Dito Telecommunity from committing 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.”
“We hope that the Supreme Court will promulgate a politically-neutral provisional remedy, as soon as possible, before the 9th of November 2022, directing the Comelec and the telecommunication companies to preserve the subscriber and cyber traffic data integrity of the national election results transmitted from 7 p.m. to at least 9 p.m. of May 9, 2022,” they said.
They also asked the SC to direct the telecommunications companies to deliver “faithful copies” of their respective records and/or details of the said data directly and exclusively to the Court.
“A petition for mandamus is proper for petitioners that invoke their constitutional rights to suffrage and to information in compelling the poll body to explain fully the complete details of its preparations in view of the unraveling of alarming events of late,” they said.
“The period of six months from the May 9 elections is soon to expire within a few days from today, or on the 9th of November,” they added, referring to the period under the Election Automated Law which mandates the Comelec to submit a report on the election results.
The petitioners also cited the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 which requires the preservation of data and subscriber information for at least six months.
The petitioners said they want to have access to the transmission logs in order to verify their observations of discrepancy between the transmissions to the transparency server and the central server.
They cited a post by Rio wherein he questioned the transmitted results of 1,525,637 votes from at least 2,000 clustered precincts that were shown on the Comelec Transparency server at 7:17 p.m. on May 9, 17 minutes after the voting closed at 7 p.m.
Rio said that under the Comelec General Instructions, it takes at least 13 seconds to print each voter verifiable paper audit trail.
“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,” the former DICT undersecretary said.
“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.
Former senator and 2016 losing vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the presidential race by a wide margin, garnering more than 31 million votes as against the over 15 million votes of his closest rival, former vice president Leni Robredo.
Robredo and the rest of the presidential candidates accepted the results of the election and did not file a case to challenge its results.
Elections spokesman John Rex Laudiangco said the Comelec is ready to comply with whatever directive the SC will issue as he welcomed the petition filed by Rio’s group. — With Gerard Naval
