The Philippine Online Chronicles

“It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting” says playwright Tom Stoppard. The playwright might not be referring to an automated election system as incidents of irregularities continue to arrive in , seven days after the May 10 automated elections.

It was exactly a week ago when  the Comelec revealed the first batch of  results on TV. It stunned me. The speed  was amazingly fast that I could barely speak when #juanvote came live at GNN shortly thereafter.  Days before, a bleak scenario of a failed automated election system (AES)  unfolded. Anxious voters thought that elections should be moved after the discovery of the malfunctioning Compact Flash (CF) Cards a few days before May 10. Even Loida Nicolas-Lewis asked “President Barack Obama to investigate the alleged questionable activities of Smartmatic in the US, and its implications on tomorrow’s national elections”.   IT expert Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of Halalang Marangal, claimed “he was not convinced that a full system audit had actually been done”. Based on Verzola’s estimates, the May 10 polls only had a 25 percent chance of success.

I was asked the following day before Blog Watch social media segment at the ANC Halalan on my thoughts about the AES success. I qualified my statement that it was a success in the sense that  the elections pulled through. The accuracy of the poll results and the irregularities that were trickling in still needed to be   investigated. The poll automation naysayers were thrilled to be wrong. Conrado de Quiros says ““I was wrong about the Comelec commissioners, I was wrong about Jose Melo, I was wrong about Smartmatic. And, boy, am I absolutely ecstatic to be so. They did a fantastic job despite an un-fantastic past. I owe them my deepest apologies,” Critics like Loida Nicolas-Lewis and Lawyer Harry Roque Jr said they were eating their words .

Jaime Garchitorena wonders  that for close to a year now, the opponents of the automated election systems (AES)  talked  about chaos scenarios and how they, as both clean election advocates and IT experts  were 100% sure that the elections would fail. “The fail point was not only the technology and the process of implementations but the LOW TRUST FACTOR that they gave the Comelec..” When Noynoy Aquino won ( we’re assuming he will be declared) all of a sudden all the critics were silenced. It wasn’t as if the process had changed or that the Comelec was more trusted. The critics were silenced because it was their candidate that won!”

On the other hand, critics  like Bobby Tuazon of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) said that Comelec claims of election “success” should be qualified “Speed is not the sole indicator or yardstick for success” Tuazon cited the lack of public disclosure of the source code, the disabling of the verifiability feature of the PCOS machines, and the fact that passwords were pre-fed into the machines.

Roland Tolentino, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications and the People’s Movement for Change (Pagbabago!) spokesperson, added that, “By no means can the automated elections be declared an unqualified success without any proof to show that the electronic count tallies with the actual votes cast.”

Poll Automation Incidents

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez says that a lot of the discrepancies that cropped up was not due to inconsistencies in the automated elections system, but human error. "Automation was never really autonomous from human participation... That’s [human participation] where the errors are cropping up... The system itself worked perfectly, which is the reason why there are significantly fewer errors and significantly more results available from the precinct transmission."

The election results may have been “fast” to cite Comelec and Smartmatic but this claim should not gloss over the fact that over and above the poll outcome is the need to establish the integrity of such results and to determine whether automation did promote democracy and address the systemic problem of fraud. Seven days after May 10, reports of incidents on the automated elections are now coming in.

1. The Pagbabago! People's Movement for Change disputed Melo's assessment, citing the Comelec's own admission that there are discrepancies between the electronic election returns and their printed versions. The discrepancies affect some 150,000 voters from 196 precincts in different provinces.
2. Ernesto Maceda present documents, furnished to him by former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza, showing election returns in Manila dated not May 10 but April 28, May 4 and May 9, to support allegations of poll pre-programming.
3. Joseph Estrada’s lawyer George Garcia questioned the hasty delivery of reconfigured flash cards the week prior to the elections as logistically improbable.

“Were the 76,000 flash cards really returned and reconfigured or were the so-called substitutes already prepared and ready for delivery in the short period of three days. And if there was really nothing irregular going on, why is it that the Comelec did not allow the presence of media and party watchers during the reconfiguration?”

4. There are 51,317,073 registered voters in the country and the total number of voters who voted is 35,276,524. Everybody was stunned when the original copy of the national canvass report by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) showed that the number of registered voters was pegged at 153 million. Comelec  immediately “acknowledged the error and blamed a script bug in the report generating programme for the wrong statistic. The agency explained further that its computer added the number of registered voters coming from three servers which multiplied the number of voters by three.”
5. Ernesto Maceda  received reports of “agents” approaching candidates before the elections offering electoral victories in pre-programmed compact flash cards and memory cards in exchange for stiff fees of as much as P30 million. Comelec dared the camp of former President Joseph Estrada to show evidence to back its allegation of massive selling of compact flash (CF) cards used by precinct-count machines to read votes during the May 10 automated polls.
6. Three sacks of election material—including ballots, election returns and memory cards.dumped in a junk shop in Cagayan de Oro.
7. The number of disenfranchised voters in last Monday’s election may range from 2 million to 8 million, a figure that could have changed the picture of the vice presidential and senatorial races, according to Marvin Beduya, Commission on Elections’ consultant on queue management.
8. The Eighty six foreign observers who constituted the Peoples’ International Observers’ Mission says that contrary to rosy reports coming out in the dominant press about the “successful” conduct of May 10 elections, it was “neither fair nor honest.” They added that “Despite the government’s rhetoric, actual practice showed that it is not committed to free and honest elections.”

Marvin Beduya  thinks that “ we should celebrate the success of the automated voting soberly and with the thought that it may not have delivered the true will of the people, the key purpose of elections, in a manner that is very difficult to prove.”

Cenpeg’s monitoring through reports from field researches and reliable sources reveal more incidents which Blog Watch confirms with their reports from the team of bloggers in various precints.

• Malfunctioning, shutting down and even destruction of PCOS machines, CF cards unable to function, paper jams and power outages in many areas
• Failure of transmission from the clustered precints forcing Bureau of Election Inspectors (BEI) to bring the CF cards or even PCOS machines to the municipal canvassing centers (manual transmission).  They have received reports from May 10-15 of failures of transmission from many municipalities and provinces; a number of clustered precints resorted to manual count due to PCOS and CF card failures.
• Delayed canvassing and random manual audits (RMAs) in many areas with the results of completed RMAs remaining undisclosed.

CenPEG in a press conference on Monday added that even before the May 10 election, the AES was already stripped of the legal processes, safeguards and minimum industry standards as mandated by the election law and Comelec’s Terms of Reference.  Urgent proposals and recommendations raised by CenPEG , the AES watchdogs for a source code review, the enabling of voters verifiability feature, digital signature, and private keys to be generated solely by Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) adequate and timely voters education and BEI training, the holding of real mock elections, and accuraten field tests remained unheeded up until the final stretch of election preparations. As mandated by law, all these were absolutely necessary in order to establish the integrity of the AES and the election results.

The Compact Flash Cards

James Jimenez, Comelec spokesman  was quoted in   the Philippine Star article , “Comelec to Erap: Prove allegations” on May 16 about the CF Cards. Jimenez said the Comelec will act on these accusations—“which he dismissed only as speculations—only if the Estrada camp shows proof of the alleged offer by unidentified persons before the elections to sell pre-programmed CF cards that would be deployed to favor certain candidates.”

Jimenez futher explains that the “compact flash cards have nothing to do with the count, all it does is say that “you machine, you are for this precint”.  Basically, what a compact flash card does is to customize a machine so that it is specific to a particular locality and that’s all that it does. It has nothing to do with the counting logic”

Dr. Pablo Manalastas, fellow and IT consultant for the CenPEG says “that the CF card has nothing to do with the counting logic is the biggest lie ever to come from Comelec”.  The CF card contains data that are the very heart and soul of the counting logic, such that use of the wrong CF card produces wrong counts and puts to question the entire results of the May 10, 2010 automated election.

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I asked him if it is possible to have pre-programmed CF cards and he said that only Comelec and Smartmatic has access to them.

Dr. Manalastas can only surmise an educated guess (because Comelec has never been transparent according to him) on the mismatch between ballots and CF cards on May 3.

Smartmatic-Comelec must have gone through several iterations of ballot design and CF card production, considering that it changed the ballot design from vertical enumeration for a position , to horizontal enumeration and considering that new names had to be added to the ballot from time to time, to accommodate new decisions about candidates made by the Supreme Court and Comelec itself. Smartmatic-Comelec produced the final version of the ballot, but forgot to produce the CF cards for the new ballot design.  Instead, Smartmatic-Comelec shipped the latest ballot design with the old CF cards. So during, the May 3, 2010 final testing and sealing (FTS) step, almost all PCOS machines failed in NCR, and Comelec had to stop the FTS, and Smartmatic promised that a new batch of 76,000 + CF cards will be produced and delivered to the precints in time for election on May 10.

To date, Comelc has not reported to the Filipino people how many of the 76,000 + new CF cards reached the correct destination precints AND successfully passed FTS before 7:00 AM on election day because only in these precints will the count be correct. (read the technical analysis of CF cards)

Comelec just doesn't have the right to destroy valuable items (CFCs) needed for auditing and examination of the poll automation conduct by their representatives, independent poll watch dogs, and other advocacy groups,” said Bobby Tuazon.  Sec. 27 of Republic Act 9369 (Amended AES Law) provides for a review and assessment of the AES technology used after the elections.

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This clip is a portion of the Documentary called "Hacking Democracy." The video represents a similar situation during the May 10, 2010 Philippine Elections. This video does not intend to accuse any Candidate of election fraud but to shed light on how election results can be manipulated to favor those who can afford. Perhaps this can help open the minds of the Filipino people to the vulnerabilities of Automated Elections in an unfortunately corrupt country.

Should we believe the Comelec Tabulation/canvass?

Comelec must prove beyond reasonable doubt that it only used election returns from consolidated precints that used only CF cards that passed FTS, because only such precints will produce correct counts. It dos not matter whether the paper ballots were fed to the PCOS machine by the voters themselves on election day, or batch-fed by the BEI to the PCOS machine after election day because the CF card arrived late and was tested later, as long as there are voters, watchers, and party representatives to witness the process and authorized people to sign the printed election return.

Poll Issues and concerns

There are issues and concerns  that Comelec should answer to test its claim of “success” and “celebration of democracy” of the May 10 election.  Data is very much needed in the documentation of the automated elections in the spirit of fully disclosing the following:

Call to action

We lose nothing by investigating Smartmatic and the way that the election and the count went. An investigation would not undermine the idea that the automated election was a success. If anything, it will prove that automation is a technology that we should adopt and that the old manual voting should be left in our past, never again to be used. Dr. Pablo Manalastas’ tentative findings are that national positions may have been accurate and that local positions are easier to cause fraud.  Bobby Tuazon added that the Hocus PCOS is possible because the AES  is vulnerable to fraud. Many questions need to be answered.

In the tight race for the vice presidency , the anxious 10^th to the 12^th spot for the senate, the party-list contest, the fiercely disputed local posts, one cannot ascertain that the electoral problems and issues are over and done with.

1. Comelec and Smartmatic should provide or make available to every interested voter, candidate or entity engaged in electoral advocacy, all documents- electronic and hardcopy , by which assessment could be accomplished with reasonable accuracy and transparency.
2. CenPEG calls for the formation of an independent, non-partisan, and impartial citizens’ body to review and assess the conduct of the May 10 automated elections, including the processes and procedures taken and the budget use in preparing for the elections and thereafter.
3. The Joint Congressional oversight committee must also act now to exercise its statutory mandate to require Comelec and Smartmatic to reveal all information or data in whatever form so that the citizens’ body could very well perform its intended duties.

While the call to action is in progress, concerned citizens group are already doing their share.

1. The Integridad sa Halalan initiated an online central clearinghouse where the Filipino people can report anomalies in the recently conluded 2010 automated elections. The site encourages all freedom-loving Filipinos to submit  with as much detail and accuracy as possible actual, confirmed incidents.
2. The Halalang Marangal encourages every candidate who lost – and won – in the machine-counted 2010 elections should demand thorough post-election testing and audit for accuracy of every counting machine and its results.
3. The Peoples’ International Observers’ Mission encouraged the Filipino people to call for an investigation and to make the Comelec, Smartmatic, the military and the Arroyo administration accountable for the bungled preparations for the elections, the numerous rights violations perpetrated in relation to the elections, and numerous “glitches” that had made voting and countin g difficult, dangerous and doubtful for many Filipinos.
4. Kontra Daya listed down seven suggestions for Comelec to consider, including a review of the clustering of precincts which resulted in long lines at the polling areas, more intensive training for those manning the polls, conducting additional mock elections, probing the faulty CF cards and the reason why ultraviolet lamps were not used in some precincts (to check the seal of the ballots), surveying the number of disenfranchised voters, and examining reports of malfunctioning Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.
5. Atty. Lorna Kapunan at the CenPEG press conference stated that there is a judicial remedy through the Writ of Habeas Data . Comelec can't just deny the irregularities just because PCOS machines were  running. Kapunan said Comelc would have to produce the documents and other materials that would show that there was no fraud.

The general rule handed down to  the #juanvote netizen’s guide is that “each eligibile voter should be allowed to vote freely and that those votes be counted quickly and accurately”. ”. We note the a big disconnect between what we all witnessed during the May 10 elections and all the claims of success. The results from the random manual audit must be awaited, and “the issues that may arise from it resolved. Questions that were unsatisfactorily addressed before election day and especially about the CF memory card fiasco must be answered."

The Filipino people want a successful election so badly, that it is easy to get carried away by a  flood of incoming election returns. The supporters of the winning candidate may not be inclined to pursue the transparency of the Comelec.  Many want to believe that a clean and speedy election actually took place. The public euphoria at the speed of counting should not erase the persistent concerns about the process

Photos by Anton Sheker and author.  Video by author. Some Rights Reserved.

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