BEFORE President Noynoy Aquino sends him the usual congratulatory message, Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte should rush him a thank you note for having contributed heavily to his coming ascension to the presidency.

Mr. Aquino was the single most effective campaigner of Duterte. His monumental maladministration fed the dissatisfaction that sent millions of Filipinos from all economic classes trooping to the polls to vote for change.

Saying the right things at the right time – punctuated by his trade-mark cursing — Duterte had become a symbol and a synonym of change. He captured the imagination of the milling millions grown tired of the incompetence, corruption, venganza and the lack of livelihood opportunities.

Even the national capital, virtually a world away from Davao, was teeming with Duterte devotees from corporate offices to the slums, because of the slime and crime, the hellish traffic, pollution, unemployment, the general breakdown of essential services and the refusal of the President to fire the culprits.

On the campaign trail, many of his own Liberal Party mates could only wince whenever Mr. Aquino mounted the stage to inflict his yellow presence on the event and start his spiel about his illusory Daang Matuwid.

Mar Roxas, the LP standard bearer, could only force a smile. It was noticeable that in the dying days of the uphill campaign, Roxas stopped singing hosannas to Daang Matuwid. In his final fighting speech, he did mention “matuwid” (without the required “daan”) but only once and in the closing sentence.

Leni Robredo, the reluctant LP vice presidential bet, managed earlier to detour her dialogue away from the bumpy Daang Matuwid. Many listeners, for instance, noticed that she did not sound totally sold to the administration’s Conditional Cash Transfer doles that perpetuate patronage politics.

But Mr. Aquino’s having amassed votes for Duterte, even if inadvertently, might still work to his interest. When the former president, naked as a plain citizen, is at the dock facing a slew of criminal charges, Duterte at the Palace might momentarily forget about change and look more kindly on his predecessor.

■ Don’t shut down Transparency Server

ON HIS TIFF with Robredo, vice presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos (Ind) is asking that the unofficial tabulation of the Transparency Server be stopped because, he said, it could cause confusion when the final results show that the official and the unofficial totals differ.

This looks like a premature overreaction. Right after the counting last Monday, all parties and major stakeholders were given an official copy of the printed results in each of the 92,509 clustered precincts nationwide. (Not included are the counts from overseas.)

Any political party, including the group of Marcos, can easily determine the correct grand total results by simply adding the precinct results given to it. The total may not yet be official, but it is based on official precinct counts that have evidentiary value.

If any party is unwilling or unable to add the numbers to find out the true final score, there must be something wrong with its auditors or its computers. The Transparency Server, which has been useful to the public and the news media, need not be blamed and shut down.

There are two parallel transmission lines – one official and another unofficial — toward the canvassing of the votes for the national positions.

While the eventual totals of the official and the unofficial tallies will/should be the same, at any given time, one of them (most likely the unofficial line) would give a bigger total because while the two lines run parallel, they do not run at the same speed.

The official line also uses the manual delivery of the SD memory cards (containing the precinct results of the Vote Counting Machines) to the municipal/ city/ provincial board of canvassers, while the unofficial route (used by the Transparency Server) uses encrypted wireless transmission that makes its data delivery faster.

That the respective totals of the two separate lines may vary at any given time is expected. But in the final complete run, their total should be the same – assuming there is no hanky panky.

■ Turnout 84%; VCM breakdown minimal

THE COMMISSION on Elections said it would look into the possible liability of automation service provider Smartmatic Philippines for the over 2,363 VCMs that malfunctioned on Election Day.

Comelec Commissioner Luie Guia said they might review the contract with Smartmatic that supplied 92,509 VCMs. However, official reports show that of a total of 76,340 VCMs used, only 350 (0.50 percent) failed — mostly because of damage sustained while being transported.

We are not alarmed by the reported failures, most of which were fixed onsite anyway. The 0.50-percent failure rate was way below the expected 2-percent leeway.

The Comelec under chair Andres Bautista performed better than the poll body under Sixto Brillantes in the 2010 and the 2013 elections. But improvements are still in order, including the full use of security features mandated by the Automated Election System law.

There should be a review of the hand transporting of SD cards containing voting results, a detail than could compromise the integrity of the entire exercise.

The Comelec must cite the authority or identify the person(s) who suggested and/or approved this crude manual transmission of sensitive voting data.

The Comelec should have anticipated also the need for voting areas on the ground floor for senior citizens and persons with disabilities. It was painful seeing the old, PWDs and heavily pregnant women hauling themselves to the second or third floor to vote.

It is to the credit of the Comelec and Smartmatic, however, that almost all (98 percent) of voting results were canvassed within 24 hours of poll closing. The Transparency Server was a great help to the public.

On the technical side, vote counts were transmitted from 13 regions just one minute after the polls closed, over 60 percent transmitted within two hours after closing time, and almost 80 percent within four hours. Results were counted and published online in real time.

By 7 p.m. of May 10, almost 95 percent of total election returns had already been processed, just 24 hours after the end of voting. Best of all, voter turnout reached around 84 percent, the highest in recent history.