This, even as Macalintal urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to extend by another five days the bio-metric registration of voters to replace the five-day suspension of registration to give way to the five-day submission of certificates of candidacy starting Monday up to Friday.
“It is not the fault of voters that they were not able to register within those five days, so that the Oct. 31 deadline for registration should be extended by the Comelec for another five days,” he stressed in an interview during his guesting at a senior citizens gathering here over the weekend.
At the same time, Macalintal expressed confidence in the reliability of PCOS machines.
“PCOS machines are okay. Only losers in elections claim cheating was done via PCOS machines. I have been challenging so-called IT (information technology) experts to show me even one evidence that a PCOS machine had falsely counted a vote in favor of another candidate, and no one could produce such evidence,” Macalintal said.
Macalintal said “it is true that there have been cheating in our elections, whether manual or automated, such as vote-buying or terrorism as when armed men cart of ballots and feed new ballots into PCOS machines but the PCOS machines themselves could not be faulted for these.”
While supporting the use of PCOs machines, Macalintal warned that the lack of bio-metrics devices at the precincts could be used by partisan board of election inspectors to disenfranchise groups of voters perceived to be supporters of a certain candidate.
“It’s not too late to purchase and install biometric devices at the precincts. The initial P700 million for that was used instead for leasing PCOS machines,” he noted.
Macalintal said that a partisan board of election inspectors could simply tell a group of voters that they were not biometrically registered and thus prevent them from casting their votes.
At the same time, Macalintal also warned candidates against syndicates claiming to have the technology to change the vote outcome through PCOS machines.
“They approach a candidate and offer their services for millions of pesos, with the condition that much more would be given to them after the victory in the elections,” he said.
Macalintal noted, however, that the syndicates also approach the candidate’s political opponents and make the same offering of victory in the polls.
“If their candidate loses, they return the money but with the syndicate’s alleged expenses already deducted,” he added.
“This is one of the reasons why some politicians think PCOS machines could be hacked and manipulated. They believed the syndicates who merely play around with them,” he also said.
