LP raises important question on incomplete COC transmissions

Chato takes COMELEC, Smartmatic to task for not providing information on the extent of these incomplete transmissions

The Liberal Party last night raised before the Congressional Joint Canvassing Committee the important question of how overall votes were affected by incomplete transmission of certificates of canvass (COCs) from municipal, city and provincial consolidation and canvassing systems (CCSs).

Camarines Norte Rep. Liwayway Vinzons-Chato also took the Commission on Elections and automated election systems provider Smartmatic for not submitting a report to Congress and the joint canvassing committee on which areas and how many votes were affected by the incomplete COCs.

“We in the joint canvassing committee are tasked to make sure that all votes cast by our people on May 10 are counted properly. It will be a disservice to our people if we do an incomplete canvass at the national level,” she said.

“It’s odd that the report (on this matter) will be submitted only after we ask for it,” she remarked, after a Smartmatic representative admitted to such discrepancies and committed to submit a report on the same.

Vinzons-Chato explained that certain COCs were incomplete on two accounts.

First, in many areas, the canvassing threshold was lowered from 100% to accommodate the proclamation of local candidates. However, no information was forwarded as to how many votes and where these votes are were not transmitted.

Second, there were several precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that erroneously transmitted electronic returns (ERs) that contained the mock votes cast during the final testing and sealing of the PCOS machines, not the actual votes cast on May 10.