Hours after the public pointed out the steep decline in voter counts for the unofficial and partial tally for this year’s senatorial race, the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) Legal Counsel, Atty. Rejie Jularbal said it likely stemmed from a duplicate file on the server.
In an exclusive interview at Dos Por Dos on Tuesday, May 13, Jularbal explained that the KBP and other media outlets get their data from one entity–the Commission on Elections (Comelec). He added that the data received by media outlets also reflects the data from the automated counting machines (ACMs).
“Kanya kanya tayo ng pagto-total [ng voter count] pero ang nakakataka is lahat tayo pare-pareho ang total as of a certain time. Tapos may natanggap tayong data na mas mababa ang total niya,” Jularbal highlighted.
On Monday evening, the unofficial and partial count for the senatorial candidate Christopher Bong Go reached 26 million. However, at around 1 AM on Tuesday, the numbers significantly dropped to 21 million.
This puzzling drop in voter count was observed in all the senatorial candidates. From over 20 million, Bam Aquino had 16 million votes in the server’s latest update.
As questions continue to loom over what happened, the KBP legal counsel explained they received a file at around 2 AM today.
What likely happened
“Yung natatanggap natin na data, ‘yun ay collated data pero untabulated. These are updated regularly. Almost every 10 minutes nakakatanggap tayo. Ang nangyari bandang 2 AM something, may natanggap tayo na 200MB na file size,” Jularbal stated, adding it might have caused the vote discrepancy observed on early Tuesday.
“Nung prinocess natin, mas mababa ang total [ng voting tally] naging 21 million. Ang unang data prior to that is about 300MB na file size, which was totalling to 26 million yung unang position,” he added.
“Nung nag update ang data from Comelec, mas mababa nung bandang 2 AM,” he continued.
From the ACMs, the data will be transferred to Comelec’s transparency server. Moreover, he said the data from ACMs is in an encrypted file and will be decrypted before it gets transferred to the servers. Jularbal pointed out that this might be where the issue stemmed from.
“Ang pagkasabi kagabi, may natanungan yung presidente ng KBP I just cannot recall who. May duplicate file na nung in-audit is natanggal. Ibig sabihin nung una nung umabot ng 26 million, may duplicate file,” he highlighted.
Although the file was duplicated, the KBP legal counsel stressed that the rankings remained the same, indicating that only the vote counts dropped.
“Hindi lang sa atin nangyayari ‘yon eh. Lahat ng kumuha sa media server, ‘yung doble,” he said, explaining that all media entities that partnered with Comelec had the same numbers reflected in their respective partial and unofficial results.
Following this, the eagle-eyed voters quickly noticed the significant change and asked for an explanation.
“May nag question kung paano nangyari ‘yon. Pero we think that Comelec can explain that, or dapat Comelec ang mag explain kasi sa kanila galing yung datos,” Jularbal stated.
In a separate interview on Tuesday, Comelec Chairman George Garcia distanced himself from the vote count glitch, adding that the poll body uses its own server, separate from the one accessed by the media.
