Election sabotage charges filed vs Comelec, Smartmatic, PPCRV

Top officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and election service provider Smarmatic are facing poll sabotage charges before the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) for allegedly changing the computer script (hash code) or program which may have altered the counting of the votes. Most of the respondents were not named in the 27-page complaint, except for Henrieta de Villa of PPCRV and Venezuelan IT expert Marlon Garcia of Smartmatic, who allegedly changed the script together with unnamed Comelec technicians to accommodate the letter “ñ” instead of “?.” The complaint was filed jointly by the Mata sa Balota Movement (MBM) and the Coalition of Clean Air Act of the Philippines which asked Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to look into the hash code switch, which they claimed seriously affected the integrity of the counting of the votes in the May 9 national and local [...]