Press Release
May 20, 2016

BONGBONG MARCOS' CAMP TO FILE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AGAINST SMARTMATIC EXEC FOR BREACH IN TRANSPARENCY SERVER

The camp of Vice Presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. is set to file a criminal complaint against Executives of service provider Smartmatic for their unauthorized change in the script of the transparency server of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

This developed as lawyer Jose Amor Amorado, Head of the BBM Quick Count Center, said they will request the poll body for additional access to other components of the Automated Election System in addition to a system audit of the transparency server and central server of the poll body.

Rep. Jonathan Dela Cruz, Marcos' Campaign Adviser said they will file a criminal case tomorrow May 20, 2016 before the Comelec against Smartmatic personnel Marlon Garcia for alleged violation of the Automated Election System Law, particularly Section 28 of RA 9369 which prohibits acts that include "interfering with, impeding, absconding for purpose of gain, preventing the installation or use of computer counting devices and the processing, storage, generation and transmission of election results, data or information".

Garcia, a Venezuelan national was tagged as the one who introduced the script change into the transparency server in violation of the Comelec protocols.

"We don't want this Venezuelan to get away with it," said Dela Cruz, noting Garcia was charged earlier for a similar offense in connection with the 2013 elections.

For his part, Amorado said the new letter to be filed before the Comelec tomorrow May 20 will seek access to the transmission logs, list of VCMs (vote counting machines), USB devices and BGANs (Broadband Global Area Network) used in the polls, as well as the public key and decryption key to open up the transmission files.

"This will enable us to explain, and we would be able to see, how many were the undervotes, which is critical to the count of the votes for the Vice Presidential position," Amorado said.

He said that as of Thursday their own count revealed undervotes of around 3.5 million for the Vice Presidential position, which is unusual because this position was hotly-contested in this election.

Amorado and Dela Cruz also lamented the cancellation of the scheduled hearing today Thursday May 19 of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System due to the absence of Smartmatic officials.

"The other thing that I think has not yet been properly advised, and which we had wanted to bring to the attention of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee, was the fact that at 10:00 p.m. on the same day, May 9 there was a non-transmission of votes from all over the country," Dela Cruz said.

Dela Cruz said the incident is suspicious because the transmission of election results from all around the country stopped simultaneously for around 10 minutes when there were no reported brownouts or other incidents that could explain this glitch. This took place after the 7:30 p.m. unauthorized change of the script in the transparency server.

Amorado and Dela Cruz said they will also look into the arrival of new Certificates of Canvass from the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Negros Occidental and Nueva Ecija, noting they have already secured a copy of their COCs earlier.

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