Solon warns vs turning off UV ink reader for poll machines

MANILA, Philippines – Reports that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and its partner Smartmatic-TIM for the May 2010 polls have turned off the UV ink readers for the 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines should be a cause for concern to the public, senatorial candidate and Gabriela Representative Liza Maza said.

“The UV ink reader is one the most important security features of the PCOS machines as it ensures the authenticity of the ballots. The Comelec's decision to turn it off triples the chances for election fraud to occur in May,” Maza, who is a guest candidate of the Nacionalista Party, said in a recent statement.

“It looks as if the Comelec deliberately kept this from the public. The Commission has known from tests results in January that there is a problem in the UV ink reader feature of the PCOS machine, but it did not inform the public, nor did it try to immediately fix the defects. With the elections only a few weeks away, the Comelec could not anymore conduct thorough research to find the most effective remedy to this problem," Maza added.

In replacement to the built-in UV ink reader, Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM plans to purchase 76,000 portable UV ink readers for the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) on May 10.

“This puts us in a lose-lose situation: If the Comelec does not purchase portable UV ink readers, we could be facing a possibly fatal breach in security in May. If it does, this could be another source of corruption,” Maza said.

Earlier, Comelec admitted that Smartmatic-TIM supplied the wrong ultraviolet (UV) ink used in the printing of the ballots for the May 10 elections, and that these marks could not be read by the PCOS machines.

Lira D. Fernandez