(Eagle News) — The Commisson on Elections on Thursday confirmed that it has allowed the changing of the script of the poll body’s transparency server, but that this was not to revise the hash code of the system.
COMELEC chair Andres Bautista said the transparency server was tweaked only to correct the error in the letter ñ.
According to the poll body, Marlon Garcia, the project manager of Smartmatic, only corrected one character of the script – to correct the letter ñ in the name of a candidate.
This was the only change in the transparency server, COMELEC insisted.
Bautista explained that an official from the technology provider Smartmatic changed a “?” to an “ñ” to correct the name.
“Ang sabi sa akin, wala itong magiging epekto sa source code na ginagamit ng ating sistema,” he said in a radio interview.
The poll chief said he had asked Smartmatic to explain this, especially to Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos’ camp.
Marcos earlier pointed to this change in script of the transparency server allegedly done on the night of May 9 as the possible reason why there was a sudden surge of votes for Robredo during the wee hours of Tuesday, May 10.
But COMELEC claimed there was nothing untoward with this change in the “script” of the transparency server.
NAMFREL also confirmed the report, claiming that the change in script would not affect the election results.