THE Commission on Elections (Comelec), already at the center of almost innumerable controversies since its adoption of the Smartmatic-based Automated Election System used in the Philippines since 2008, has gone a step too far with its latest move to quietly return 1,356 vote-counting machines (VCMs) to Smartmatic.

The VCMs were supposedly “contingency” machines, only to be used in case of a failure of any of the more than 90,000 VCMs deployed across the country for the election. As mere back-ups, Comelec would have everyone believe, these particular machines played no part in the May elections, and were simply spare components to be returned to the distributor as a matter of housekeeping.