Comelec inspects data server facility
With 58 days to go until the May 12 elections, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair George Erwin Garcia led on Friday an inspection of the data center in Makati City that will house transparency servers for approved groups.
Garcia and other Comelec officials participated in a walkthrough at the Data Center 3 at Ayala Circuit, where they viewed arrangements to secure the servers that will be given to the two accredited citizens arms, media arm and the dominant majority and minority political parties.
The servers will receive election results from about 94,000 polling places that will be transmitted simultaneously by automated counting machines (ACMs).
Garcia said security will be tight in the data center so that unlike in one previous election, unauthorized persons will not be able to go near or touch the servers on voting day.
Central server
There will be a server for the city and municipal canvassing boards, and a central server that will be under the custody of the Comelec that will be mirrored by Department of Information and Communications Technology. There will also be a backup server.
The May 12 elections is the first time that Comelec signed separate contracts for the automated counting and transmission services. The electronic results from the ACMs will be provided by a different company contracted by the poll body for canvassing and consolidation.
Garcia said he will be speaking to the information technology officers sent by the two citizen’s arms, the accredited media arm and the dominant majority and minority parties to establish a protocol on the release of partial and unofficial results.
“The results [to be received by the servers from the ACMs] should be the same as the results in the printed election returns,” he said.
To avoid accusations of trending or suspicions of electronic cheating, the chair said results could be released by batches by the hour or by the number of precincts that have transmitted results.
“If there is a race [to release results], one server custodian might release results for 10,000 precincts only and the other for 20,000 precincts. They won’t match [and] the people might think there is a problem [with the machines] and there is cheating,” Garcia said.
He said unofficial results will be known on the night of the election while official results from the various local and national boards canvassers will be out in four to five days.
Meanwhile, Garcia said the Comelec is set to complete the printing of ballots for about 69 million registered voters expected to cast ballots on May 12.
The printing of the last three million ballots is expected to be finished Saturday afternoon at the National Printing Office in Quezon City.
