Dear Sir:
This article today was a surprise to me. Not that it was surprising that it was following up on an earlier article written, but surprising in how certain “facts” were presented.
For instance, in today’s article, it was written:
He who is a certified member of MENSA but whose boss loves to badmouth before politicians kept changing the story. First he said there’s a disclaimer that the new posting, culled from the agency’s Transparency Server of the precinct counting, might differ from the official canvass results.
making it appear that I made that claim originally.
And yet, look here at what the earlier article said:
One senator’s chief of staff noticed that the posting of July 11 at first had a disclaimer, to wit, that the new results were based on the Comelec’s transparency server, and so may not jibe with the official canvass.
The next day the disclaimer was gone.
Since the author and I haven’t spoken in awhile, I can only assume that he got his information from a news article which, in my opinion, was less than hi-fidelity. Nevertheless, the crux of it is this: I referred to this claim of a disclaimer which I read in the earlier article and said that the apparent disappearance of the disclaimer was the principal reason for some quarters’ discomfiture.
As the author himself saw fit to write:
Meaning, said one AES Watcher: “This is a work in progress, and the plot thickens. For, why post such disclaimer about the figures, then remove it so the new figures now look ‘official’?”
The only legends that remain in the revised new posting are “Results Date: May 29, 2013 8:27:02 AM PHT” and “Copyright © 2000-2013 Smartmatic International, all rights reserved”.
Next, today’s article also claimed:
Then he said the figures are lower because the precinct count was never finished.
A glaring inaccuracy, I am sorry to say, because I never said that. As we have maintained time and time again, the official count may differ from the tally derived from the Transparency Server, but that does not mean the “precinct count was never finished.” To confuse these two concepts – or worse, to use them interchangeably – indicates that the author’s source probably didn’t understand what was being said. If I was in any way unclear, I apologize of course.
And then, today’s article claims:
Next day he said he would investigate who deleted the disclaimer. Yet another day, it’s a supposed encoding or software glitch.
This assertion is particularly interesting because it broke into two days what I said all in the space of one fifteen-or-so minute interview. Obviously, if someone claims that something disappeared from the website, the first step would be to ask why. And in the meantime that you’re waiting for a reply, you form a hypothesis, which I did. And my hypothesis was that the coding of the web page might have been to blame. After all, when content is updated, it isn’t unusual for the page to sometimes display incorrectly, yes?
And so, you see, sir, I have not been changing my story at all.
Again, I would like to apologize if I was unclear in anyway.