So, there's something really wrong here.

The 2004 national election will not fail because of unreliable automated counting machines, the Department of Science and Technology maintained on Thursday.

The engineer Rolando Villoria, chief of the department’s Metals Industries Research and Development Center, told The Times that contrary to earlier reports the counting machines acquired by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from South Korea are not defective.

1. Someone tell me when does an engineer from the Metals Industries Research and Development Center of the DOST become an expert on automated counting machines?

Villoria explained that Mega Pacific, the distributor of the machines, have already made the necessary redesigning to correct the lens assembly, which had caused the machines to malfunction during the first testing.

“Based on the testing we made, there has been no failure in the functions of counting machines to be used in the 2004 computerized election. We also believe that the remaining machines will pass our standards because of the necessary corrections made,” Villoria ascertained.

2. Since the suspect machines were the "9 out of 30" in the first delivery, I don't understand why he believes the remaining machines will be okay only after the corrections are made. Does that mean that they're all really defective (regardless of when they are shipped) and they have to be corrected here in order for them to pass the tests? That's the way I read this.