Elections as an instrument of political control 173 Both the foregoing petitions were for non-proprietary items and should have been readily disclosed if Comelec were indeed being transparent. The information requested would have permitted some post-performance assessment and verication that could help establish the authenticity and integrity of electronically transmitted results. Regarding the actual conduct of the elections, a comprehensive assessment is – as of this writing – still being assembled after reports from all over the country have been gathered, veried, and evaluated. Namfrel [National Movement for Free Elections], the accredited citizens' arm of Comelec had already reported that 2,366 voting and counting machines malfunctioned on election day. That is strange if all the machines were in fact duly tested and sealed as certied by the TEC. Namfrel also reported that the transmission of election results stalled at 96.69%. In fact, Maricor Akol of Namfrel reported that transmission suspiciously stopped completely between 6:00 pm and 6:10 pm of election day. A complete stoppage of transmissions from all regions is highly unusual and gives rise to speculations about what was going on (physically or electronically) during this blocked-out period. In a public statement, Namfrel also observed that the “Random Manual Audit” – a required procedure at the municipal levels – was not done in accordance with the prescribed guidelines and this “caused challenges in the verication, appreciation, and summarization of results”. Namfrel also stated that it is investigating what appears to be an unusually “high percentage of undervotes and overvotes”. Namfrel said that it will “analyze and evaluate the causes and implications” after it is able to properly verify the data. Even this early after the polls, however, citizens' poll watchdog AES Watch has publicly released a statement that says that “the glitches and uncertainties” have been repeated on “a more widespread scale” than those seen in the 2010 and 2013 elections. To take just one noteworthy example of an unacceptably anomalous incident. On election day, after canvassing had started and while ofcial results were already being transmitted, a Smartmatic technician suddenly intervened and introduced a script in the canvassing program supposedly to replace the character “?” with an “ñ” in the name of two candidates.(Osmeña and Señeres). Smartmatic's technical director Marlon Garcia (a Venezuelan) then asserted that this was a minor change that did not affect the canvassing results. Comelec chairman Bautista distanced himself from the ensuing furor by stating that Comelec did not authorize this intervention but at the same time insisting that the change was merely “cosmetic” and did not affect any election results. Both – and all the subsequent parties (including the complicit Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) who agreed that the change was minor – missed the point entirely. The essential point in this matter is not that the change was “minor”; the crucial issue is that a Smartmatic technician had access to the server program