IT experts call for parallel manual count

MANILA, Philippines – Information technology (IT) experts are worried about possible cheating in the May 10 automated elections and are appealing to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to consider their proposal for a parallel manual count to ensure the credibility of poll results.

Ma. Corazon Akol, president of the Philippine National IT Standards Foundation (PhilNITS), said there is a likelihood of an “automated Garci” in the coming elections. Garci refers to former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who was suspected of helping President Arroyo win in the 2004 elections through manipulation of poll results. A wiretapped phone conversation between Mrs. Arroyo and a man she called “Garci” concerning an alleged plot to commit poll fraud had been the basis for an impeachment case against her in 2005.

“The citizenry may be lulled into thinking that because the May 10 automated elections will use high-tech machines and computerized systems, (they are) virtually free from cheating,” Akol told a press conference at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati City yesterday.

“The truth is that the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines, the operating and transmission programs and the whole system itself can be rigged, without our even knowing how or where the new sophisticated dagdag-bawas (padding and shaving) scheme might be perpetrated,” she said.

“They can hide a cheating program in PCOS,” said Augusto Lagman, lead convenor of transparentelections.org. “Preset results can be stored in compact flash cards,” he said.

He said these commands could be inserted into any of the computer programs in the PCOS machines or into computers that would be used to transmit election results from the municipalities and provinces.

Lagman said election results may still be tampered with during the transmission and canvassing of votes.

Lagman said that based on their study, it would only take about three hours for a precinct with 500 voters and five hours for a precinct with 1,000 voters to do parallel count.

Lagman said the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) would do the parallel count.

He said the poll body would only need an extra P300 million for additional honorarium of the BEIs.

Another IT expert, Beng Coronel, said their proposal for a simplified parallel count would only involve counting the votes for the president, vice president and mayor.

“We are proposing a simplified parallel manual count for the three top positions and we will compare the manual and the PCOS counts. If the difference is more than eight votes, or 1.3 percent, we propose that we do the manual votes for all the positions,” Coronel said.

The IT professionals urged the Comelec to decide on their proposal not later than April 23.

“We appeal to Comelec Chairman Jose Melo and the rest of the commission to sit down with us as time is running out, so that together we can implement the recommendation and agree on solutions to both legal and logistics concerns,” Akol said.

Akol said many security provisions under the Automated Elections Law “were disregarded, removed or replaced with vulnerable alternatives.”

“The pilot testing of the system was not done, the source code review, as strictly defined by law, was not granted, on-the-spot verification by the voter and the ultraviolet detector were disabled, and controlled access features were disregarded,” she said.

In Cebu City, Liberal Party (LP) presidential candidate Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III called on the Comelec to be transparent in its plans for the May 10 polls.

“We have asked Comelec if they can identify the areas where they envision manual system of counting so we can prepare accordingly,” he said at a press briefing.

“If they will tell us two days before elections that doesn’t make for a level playing field,” he added.

“We want to impress upon our voting population and the citizenry in general (that) they have to exercise some modicum of pressure on Comelec to do that which is right by all of us,” Aquino said.

“Don’t forget in terms of the source code (for the PCOS), they are giving access at a point in time when it is no longer feasible to examine the source code. We wouldn’t want to have the same situation happen when they suddenly say we will have automation here and manual there,” he said.

“Perhaps in areas that have been very, very notorious in the past they can reserve automation there. In areas with more intense scrutiny like Cebu or Metro Manila, that will be where we have the manual system of counting if necessary,” Aquino said.

“There are ballots for instance that could be tampered with something invisible to the naked eye and when read by the PCOS machines, they will be rejected,” the LP standard-bearer said.

“There is no 100 percent guarantee. But the guarantee will be lost even more if the Comelec will be allowed to dilly- dally,” he said.

Good enough

A fault-free automated elections system may not be possible anymore, but troubleshooting schemes offered by Comelec and Smartmatic Philippines should ease worries, according to Malacañang.

“If you want 100 percent performance guaranteed from your supplier, it will cost you obviously more in terms of money and time and preparation in order to enforce a 100 percent expectation,” deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said. But he admitted he was not aware of the details of the contract.

“If you want to be more reasonable and accept something less than 100 percent then at the very least you should ask for, number one, transparency about the possible risk and number two, a contingency plan or fallback scenario, fallback actions in order to cover the risk of less than 100 percent performance,” Olivar added.

Cezar Flores, Smartmatic-Philippines spokesman, has admitted that operational glitches like what happened in Hong Kong last Saturday on the first day of the overseas absentee voting process would definitely happen on May 10.

“Ballots will not be read and rejected, these kinds of operational problems are standard, these things will happen on election day and this should be explained to the people,” Flores said.

“Based on the standards – and everybody in the industry knows it – that 0.5 percent of the machines may malfunction, that is why we are readying eight percent contingency machines,” he added.

Olivar argued that as long as the Comelec and Smartmatic have their fallback measures and exercise transparency at all times, then “we can work with that.”

“I think that is an acceptable alternative,” Olivar said.

“I think they’re (Smartmatic) just being frank talking about their obligations and responsibilities and perhaps that might be appreciated,” he added.

Olivar said that reverting to manual counting and canvassing should not be equated to a failure of elections.

“If you have 30 percent failure of machines then (we’ll do) 30 percent manual counting. All our previous elections are manually counted,” he said.

“I would prefer to look on the bright side,” Olivar added.

Olivar reiterated that the Comelec deserves full support for its task.

“The overall principle is that this is not an easy exercise so this is a time to call for support for Comelec because there’s only one Comelec. We only have one Comelec to work with and to lead this process,” Olivar said. –Helen Flores (The Philippine Star) with Marvin Sy and Aurea Calica