Part of the change

Trust the machine, Chairman Jose Melo of the Commission on Elections told me last year.

Yesterday I looked at a Precinct Count Optical Scan or PCOS machine, now attached to a model of the new-generation ballot box, as it was used in a simulated voting exercise to kick off the voter education campaign of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV).

The PCOS machine worked fine, although it accepted even a filled-out ballot containing the doodles made by STARweek editor Doreen Yu, who was one of those picked to try automated voting. This, Smartmatic explained, was because the doodles were not on the bar code at the bottom of the ballot or on the markings along the side of the long sheet.

Though Doreen’s doodles were accepted by the machine, the markings could hit the oval spaces that are supposed to be shaded to indicate a voter’s choices, which could make Doreen end up voting for candidates she does not want.

A fold or crumple on the paper can have the same effect, Smartmatic warned.

When marks were placed on the bar code and the side of the ballot, it was spat out by the machine. A folded ballot was also spat out; it was read as two sheets and rejected. Apart from the security code, the ballot paper uses ultraviolet ink; a fake ballot will be rejected by the machine.

Smartmatic has also been awarded the contract, without bidding, to produce the new-generation ballot boxes. Unlike the old yellow metal boxes, the new ones will give a literal meaning to transparency. You can watch your ballot as you feed it into the machine. It will be out of sight as the data is processed for a few seconds. Then you’ll see it again as it falls into the box, which looks like it will be made of special fiberglass.

The machine will welcome you with, “Please insert ballot.” When you’re done, the machine tells you, “Congratulations, your vote has been registered.”

Though the list of choices for the party-list alone contains about 180 groups (the reason the ballot has been redesigned from vertical to horizontal), a voter who goes into the polling booth with his choices already made can finish shading all the oval spaces within three or four minutes, according to Smartmatic-TIM representative Miguel Avila.

“It’s really a very simple technology,” Avila told the journalists gathered at yesterday’s event.

After watching your ballot fall into the box, you go to the election inspectors to have your finger marked with indelible ink.

If you want to ensure that your vote will be counted, shade the oval completely; less than 50 percent shading will not be counted by the machine.

Oh, and you have to return the black felt tip marker that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is providing for free use, for easier shading of the ovals.

Voting ends when the machines print out election returns that will be given to eight groups, including the board of canvassers, accredited political parties, the PPCRV and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas.

Being low tech, I brought along the head of the STAR’s digital production department, to make sure we understood all the techie talk.

Your vote is encrypted and transmitted within seconds. The machine has a huge 128-bit encryption. This means a hacker needs to develop a program that can break into more than a “gazillion” algorithms to alter what has been encrypted, Avila said.

While it’s “possible” to hack the system, it’s “highly improbable,” according to Avila. Our resident techie agreed, so I leave it at that.

* * *

Now we come to the transmission, whose smooth operation has come under doubt following reports that mobile phone jammers might be used to disrupt data transmission.

Smartmatic has said that the worst that can happen is a delay in transmission.

In places where the telecommunications signal is weak — about 30 percent of remote areas — Smartmatic will tap satellites. This could delay transmission by about two hours, but Smartmatic vows that the results will be known by evening of Election Day.

Telecommunications giants Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular have promised a bigger bandwidth for data transfer during the elections.

With the approval of the National Telecommunications Commission, mobile phone jammers can be used for legitimate purposes, to prevent the disruption of shows or businesses, prevent interference with electronic signals such as those in hospital radiology units, and of course for security purposes.

A dealer who used to sell only about five jammers a month has sold hundreds in the past two months, buying them abroad for about $300 each and selling them here for $900.

The Comelec is investigating reports that some 5,000 jammers have been smuggled into the country. Who brought them in and for what purpose?

While the PCOS machines may not be hacked, our techie said the target may not be individual machines in 40,000 polling centers, but the Comelec server itself. We don’t know the security systems in place for the server.

Those glitches in recent field tests conducted by the Comelec and Smartmatic, wherein the machines’ SIM cards failed and had to replaced, could have been meant to test the system’s response.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, on the other hand, said the glitches were helping the poll body fine-tune the PCOS machines.

“We have back-up plans in case something happens,” Larrazabal assured the public yesterday.

But the best backup is a vigilant citizenry. Henrietta de Villa of the PPCRV, who was assisted yesterday by her daughter Ana de Villa Singson, said they wanted the people to participate in ensuring CHAMP, or “clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful” elections.

At the launch of the information campaign, journalists were shown the security measures that will be in place to ensure that the PCOS machines, ballot boxes, electronic data and election return printouts are free from tampering.

The machines have dedicated keys and will be programmed for use specifically in a particular precinct and for the exact number of registered voters in that precinct.

All political parties will be given “hash codes” so they can verify whether the same machine used for casting votes was also the same machine used for transmission.

But in the end, the biggest factor in ensuring the holding of credible elections is public vigilance. Those who want to know more about this and responsible voting can log on to ibanangayon.ph – a website that means “it’s different this time.”

We want change? “We are part of the change,” a forthcoming voting infomercial declares. –Ana Marie Pamintuan (The Philippine Star)