‘No dagdag-bawas’: Comelec explains short-lived vote mismatch

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Media teams have quickly cleaned up the data they got from the Comelec's central server, and adjusted the numbers on their election results sites

MANILA, Philippines – There was no attempt to pad or shave anyone’s votes, there was just varying ways and speed by which end users processed and presented the data made available by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

This was how Comelec Chairman George Garcia addressed on Tuesday, May 13, concerns about the few hours on election night when various poll trackers displayed counts that turned out to be based on data batches where some precincts were duplicated.

Rappler reported early morning Tuesday that the tech teams of media organizations stationed at the Comelec’s server center in Makati realized close to midnight that the duplicated precincts had been reflected in the quick counts on their sites.

We reported that by around 2 am, the media teams had cleaned up the data they got from the Comelec’s central server, and the numbers reflected on their election results sites had been adjusted.

“Wala pong dagdag-bawas na nangyayari (There’s no vote-padding or vote-shaving happening),” Garcia said in a press briefing.

“Ang pagbabasehan niyo lagi — ’yung mga kandidato, ‘yung mga political parties — i-save ‘nyo ‘yung Comelec website na inilalabas namin. Kasi ‘yung Comelec website, walang interruption ‘yun, tuloy-tuloy po ‘yun na nangyayari,” Garcia said.

(The basis of your count — I’m addressing this to candidates, political parties — is what we put out on the Comelec website. You should save the Comelec that. Because the Comelec website does not get interruptions, it is always up.)

Garcia explained that the poll body receives “human-readable data.” Compared with the data that others get, Comelec’s tracker offers real-time updates as it no longer has to process and clean up data.

Meanwhile, media organizations, poll watchdogs, and political parties have to disaggregate the data that they access through the five other transparency servers of the Comelec.

He said this is why it takes a while for some media outlets’ trackers to reflect the same data the Comelec has. However, some were not able to clean up the data they were receiving from the media server.

The citizens’ arm of the Comelec, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Reporting, also issued a statement on Tuesday, explaining the delays in updating their quick count. They cited the same process of having to clean up first the data they got from Comelec to remove duplicated precincts.

Garcia assured the public that all other trackers connected to its server receive the same data it gets.

As of writing, the Comelec website shows that the poll body has received 99.05% of ERs from local precincts, while 88.84% from those overseas are already sent in.

The clarification comes after discrepancies were noted in multiple election results pages of media past midnight on Tuesday. Transmission from thousands of precincts were duplicated, resulting to around 5 million extra votes.

After media outlets’ tech teams raised the issue with Comelec’s IT, they immediately sent new, corrected files without the duplicates.

Votes from 15,001 precincts were affected, affecting the rankings of about 7,600 candidates.

Rappler reported that reelectionist Senator Bong Go suffered 5.2 million after the adjustments, but he remained the frontrunner in the Senate race. The top 12 senatorial candidates were unchanged too. – with reports from The Rappler Data Team/Rappler.com