The Philippine Online Chronicles

I was present at a press conference last February 18, called by the the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) Chairman, Jose Cuisia, together with Damaso Magbual (Chairman, NAMFREL Membership Committee) and Eric Jude Alvia (NAMFREL Secretary General).

Cuisia announced that whether they get accredited or not, the NAMFREL National Council, together with its partners in Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)  and National Secretariat for Social Action-Justice and Peace (NASSA) have decided to forge ahead with plans to get involved in the May 2010 automated elections.

In this regard, Cuisia announced that they would be filing a Motion for Reconsideration with the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). If this motion is denied, they will be forced to go to the Supreme Court.

With around 80 days left to go before the May 2010 elections, NAMFREL shares the same concerns raised by  Automation Election System (AES) Watch during its January 18 launch as well as in its updated rating dated Jan. 26.

NAMFREL raised the following points of concern:

Incessant timeline revisions & missed deliverables

- Constantly revised timelines to accommodate delays

- Inability to meet deliverables, e.g., late delivery of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines & Consolidation/Canvassing System (CCS), ballot printing, training and education of Board of Inspectors (BEIs), hiring/orientation of qualified IT personnel, absence of voters list, etc.

Queue mismanagement

- Inadequate study and preparation to manage voters queue overflow resulting from the clustering of precincts

Lack of voters education

- Absent, shortened and/or delayed training of voters, BEIs and related election workers (this was reinforced by a recent Pulse-Asia survey showing that 7 out of 10 Filipinos have little or no knowledge of the automated election process.

Absence of general instructions

- No such instructions released yet addressing canvassing, especially in the appreciation, consolidation & preparation of Certificates of Canvass (CoCs) and Statement of Votes (SoVs)

- No random manual audit guidelines

- No electoral protest mechanism & adjudication procedure

Lack of Comelec & Smartmatic transparency and cavalier attitude

- NAMFREL cites the silence on the results of the Technical Evaluation Committee findings assessing Comelec’s readiness for automated elections in six (6) areas.

Test & mock elections revealed flaws

- In Taguig City last month (January), two out of five machines (a 40% error) experienced transmission flaws.

- Last week’s mock polls further revealed process flaws and highlighted a high rejection rate of ballots

- Participating mock voters were still confused

- There was no proper mock or actual simulation (stress) test on man and machines

No proper or transparent source code review & PCOS testing

- NAMFREL said that while Comelec already commissioned an independent company called Denver-based SysTest Labs to review the source code, SysTest’s findings have not been made public

Communication infrastructure & transmission

- Inadequate availability of CMTS transmission facilities nationwide

- Insecure transmission of results & data centers

- Only 65% of the 95% mapped RP areas are connected, thus a great possibility of manual elections in many areas

Challenges in deployment of machines

- Rugged Philippine topography & inadequate transportation infrastructure

Audit procedure not clear

- No guidelines issued

- Manual audit is post-proclamation, not pre-proclamation

Disenfranchised by errors

- Law allows voter to get a replacement ballot but Comelec has ruled that each voter will only be entitled to one ballot. There is a huge probability that many ballots could be disenfranchised especially in light of the mock election results and the Pulse-Asia survey on lack of voter education

Power failure

- The power outages being experienced already in the Visayas and Mindanao lend to concerns that in May, at the height of summer, the elections there could be disrupted

Ballot printing & security

- NAMFREL's statement mentions reports that a batch of ballots for a particular region and voting sector did not contain the desired security features recommended by the National Printing Office (NPO).

No voter auditability

- A feature in the PCOS machine that provides a feedback or “electronic receipt” to a voter of how his ballot was cast has been disabled. The voter result screen display and the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) as originally stipulated in the Request for Proposal (RFP) was dispensed with

NAMFREL said these were just some of what they refer to as the “litany of vulnerabilities, gaps and inadequacies”.

With NAMFREL’s accreditation still hanging in the air, Cuisia is determined to provide an unofficial parallel count (not a quick count, he emphasizes). He said it would be more challenging. As NAMFREL will not be given the 4^th copy of the election results, they will need to find ways to provide an alternative count.

Here are some words from Cuisia on the issues presented:

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Meanwhile, Cuisia is calling on the citizenry to be even more vigilant as the public has been made aware of all the concerns already brought out not just by NAMFREL but by other civic groups like AES WATCH.

Photo from author. Some Rights Reserved.

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