Systematic fraud marks 2010 auto polls

Comelec insists on buying PCOS machines, despite AES likely death

Systematic cheating marked the 2010 automated polls, the chairman of the House of Rerpesentatives committee on suffrage and electoral reforms yesterday said in a TV interview, stressing that he will be proposing for Congress to junk the automated elections in 2013, given the many instances of fraud noted, and moreover substantiated by documentary evidence.

Congressional committee chairman outgoing Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. stressed that Smartmatic, while coming up with a lot of excuses and explanations as to why certain irregularities were noted, despite the Commision on Elections’ (Comelec) technical partner’s guarantees on the security features of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, failed to provide satisfactory answers.

Locsin made it clear that he will be opposing a plan of the Comelec to automate the 2013 polls after evidence showed that there was systematic cheating in the last polls, although Locsin claimed that the cheating was done only in the local level.

This statement was however challenged by Comelec commmissioner Gregorio Larrazabal,

who pointed out that this was based on one and the same program, and applies to both the local and national level.

It was not explained by Locsin why he claims that systematic cheating could only have happened in the local level, and not the national level.

Despite these findings by the committee, however, the Comelec appears bent on buying the PCOS machines.

Comelec has finally decided to acquire the PCOS, although not all of it, but only some, worth about P150 to 180 million machines of Smartmatic.

Comelec chairman Jose Melo claimed that he has not as yet read the congressional report of Locsin but said the poll body’s decision not to purchase all 82,000 PCOS machines is basically because the Comelec does not want “to be tied down” to the same technology.

“The total number that we used for the 2010 polls, we are not purchasing because we don’t want to be tied down to Smartmatic and its PCOS,” Melo told reporters, adding that with the fast changing technology available “may be in three years, we will have a much improved system available to us.”

Melo explained that while it is stated in their P7.2 billion contract with Smartmatic that they have the option to buy the machines “we said we just put that in the contract, option to buy. But we’re not serious about purchasing them.”

But he said they may purchase some 487 PCOS machines worth about $3-4 million which will be used in the special elections in some more areas that have yet to be set as well as in dealing with election protests filed before the commission.

Based on the contract, all PCOS machines leased by the Comelec will be pulled out come the expiration of the agreement on Dec. 31, 2010.

The Comelec chief admitted that there are enough grounds for the report of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms to say that “all the loopholes in the PCOS and the automated election process should be firmly plugged”.

He admitted that the AES used by Smartmatic and Comelec still has a lot of things that should be improved.

“There’s a vast room for improvement in the elections. We need to improve it so that it would be error free, criticism-free,”said Melo while adding that he has yet to receive a copy of the House panel’s report.

Asked what areas that needed improvements, Melo said in the aspects of voters’ education, transmission and security.

He said nothing about the fact that it was the commission’s decision to cut off a lot of security features which allowed the cheats free rein to alter the data, as well as the fact that Smartmatic’s PCOS certainly was easily hacked.

It is also doubted that the next elections will be automated. In all probabilty, given the experience of electronic fraud, it will be back to manual elections, or at most, a hybrid of manual and automated polls.

In the Chairman’s Report, Locsin said sporadic cheating in the country’s first automated general elections last month appears to be confined to local races.

But these, taken with the “fitful credibility” with which technical provider Smartmatic-TIM explained crucial date-and-time stamp issues in the vote-counting machine, and the Comelec’s move to discard certain security features, made it necessary to revisit the country’s experiment with automation—and perhaps even set it aside for the next elections if the loopholes of the May 10 exercise are not plugged.

“The cheating appears therefore to have been confined to local contests. While it is true that unused ballots are supposed to be torn in half, with the left side put in one envelope and the right in another, these folders are lost and not even most of the PCOS machines have been retrieved, let alone their CF cards, secrecy folders, pens, not to mention the huge ballot boxes themselves which remain in the custody of incumbent winners who are awaiting the rainy season to wash away the evidence,” said Locsin.

During the hearing, Smartmatic told the committee that it has the responsibility to retrieve the machines, but has no authority to return them to its plant for diagnostic testing.

This, Locsin learned, needs an authorization from the Comelec en banc, which he rued “might come when all interest in the matter has evaporated.”

Locsin, one of the authors of Republic Act 9369 on poll automation, has also suggested—in light of the May 10 experience—the use of a hybrid ballot where the voter casts his vote by shading ovals, but with a part of the ballot where the voter could handwrite a word or phrase other than his or her name in lieu of the ballots used during the May 10 polls. He was alluding to allegations of preshading of the ovals and refeeding to the machine in some of the disputed areas.

Locsin suggested that before the next automated election, “all the loopholes in the PCOS and the automated election process should be firmly plugged by either the current provider or by another more assiduous supplier.”

Otherwise, he said, “a reversion to manual elections with heightened vigilance by organizations like the PPCRV and Namfrel would probably yield more credible and accurate results.”

In the TV interview, however, Locsin said complainants in the House probe presented documentary evidence that proved vote-rigging and that the PCOS can be used for cheating.

“Candidates came forward to show that there was voting that started at 10 in the evening, there was voting on other days and there was pre-shading ballots,” he said.

“Smartmatic tried to give one explanation after another, but none of the explanations held, and in the end, they admitted they cannot explain,” he said.

Locsin said some boards of election inspectors actively participated in fraud practices and that poll machine supplier Smartmatic-TIM was not able to prove that the machines cannot be used for fraud.

Locsin’s 47-page chairman’s report claimed that sporadic cheating in the May 10 polls was confined to the local races usually through manipulation of time and date stamps, resetting the machines, refeeding already scanned or unused ballots and taking complete control of precincts.

It said that while the process of manipulating the votes at the local level was time-consuming, laborious and risky, “the risk of discovery was mitigated by the certain knowledge that the media would dismiss the cheated candidate as a sore loser, forgetting the principle that while some losers cry cheated, some winners really cheated.”

Locsin said that the time and date stamp issues “are too serious in all its aspects for the members of the committee to be convinced by explanations” that he described as sounding “like works in progress” at best.

“An election return that is dated other than the official day of elections must be taken at face value and is legally invalid. Voting logged as taking place hours after the close of voting hours, with ballots logged as having been fed to the voting machine at a fast and unvarying rate consistent only with one person doing it, are not just suspicious but invalid as well. It is no argument to say that when the time is wrong, the time is still right just because it is consistently wrong. Smartmatic tried to argue 12 hours of voting is still 12 hours of voting whenever and whatever the time logged or, for that matter, the date of the ER,” he said.

Meanwhile, eight Comelec personnel and two private individuals were invited for questioning by the three-men panel tasked to probe the controversial P689 million ballot secrecy folder.

Comelec Law department director Ferdinand Rafanan, who heads the panel said they have tackled all phases of the ballot secrecy folder to determine fully if there were indeed irregularities committed in the botched ballot secrecy folder acquisition.

When asked if a commissioner or the Comelec executive director Jose Tolention was among those questioned, Rafanan declined to comment.

He said their 90 page report includes reports and documents from the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) headed by Leah Alarkon as well as documents from the supposed supplier OTC Paper Supply.

For his part, Comelec chairman Jose Melo vowed to act swiftly on the report submitted by the group of Rafanan.

“I want immediate action… We will impose a deadline (on our actions),” Melo told reporters.

But Rafanan said the decision would still be on the en banc if they will adopt or not their recommendations.

“If the en banc does not accept it (recommendations), it will be nothing. But if the en banc will act in accordance with our recommendations, then we will have something,” said Rafanan.

In early April, the Comelec en banc had ordered the creation of a three-man panel to probe the alleged overpricing in the procurement of more than 1.8 million ballot secrecy folders worth P380 each from OTC Paper Supply.

Based on the report, we will make a decision who is guilty and who is not. They will be charged properly,” assured Melo. With Marie A. Surbano, Charlie V. Manalo and PNA