It seems it is all-systems go for the automation of elections in the Philippines. For a while, it seemed the Commission on Elections would have to revert to the decades-old manual voting system when the Philippine partner in the joint venture that won the poll automation bidding said it was withdrawing from the venture because of some internal issues.
The local partner – Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) – eventually patched up its differences with its Barbados-based foreign partner Smartmatic, enabling Comelec Chair Jose Melo to declare that poll automation in the 2010 presidential elections shall proceed as scheduled.
Under a proposed agreement, the Comelec would lease from Smartmatic a total of 82,200 precinct count optical scan machines for P4 billion and pay an additional P3.19 billion for services related to the delivery, installation, maintenance, and operation of the machines.
To ensure that TIM and Smartmatic would abide by the their agreement with Comelec, Melo said a contract to be signed by the poll body and the joint venture would have provisions that would enable the poll body to withhold both the election machines and part of their lease fee of P4 billion.
“If anything goes wrong in the elections, there is the 30 percent of the P4 billion (amounting to P1.2 billion), which we will not pay,” Melo said. “And we will be holding their machines and not allow them to be shipped away.” In the event another rift between Smartmatic and TIM surfaces, thereby preventing the smooth operations of the 2010 polls, Melo said the poll body is seriously looking at the possibility of blacklisting the companies in future Comelec projects.
We can glean from Melo’s statements that the poll body is not convinced 100% that the system would work, and that TIM and Smartmatic would deliver on their part of the deal. Melo left plenty of room for doubt.
While Melo assured the people that at least 30% of the lease money would be recovered and that the Tim-Smartmatic partnership would be barred from participation in future Comelec projects, he failed to reassure the voters that the system would be in place by May 2010 and that there would be no failure of elections resulting from a bungled poll automation experiment.
The Comelec should take into serious consideration a study by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) that it should look at 30 weak points in the automated election system.
CenPEG, a private think tank based in UP Diliman, and in partnership with the UP College of Law, warned of an automation disaster and disenfranchisement of millions of voters if the Comelec and the joint venture of Smartmatic and TIM fail to install safeguards and security measures.
Romulo Tuazon, UP professor and CenPEG director for political study, said his group has identified at least 30 vulnerable spots from ballot printing, warehousing of counting machines to hardware and software deficiencies, voting, counting, electronic transmission of votes to canvassing and proclamation of winners.
The list does not include weak points in the infrastructure system, such as telecommunications, phone and electric lines and cell sites, he said. In particular, Tuazon pointed out the lack of a “source code” review, possible lapses in the digital signature, possible unofficial access to the canvassing servers, and the lack of voter’s verifiability.
“The system’s vulnerabilities make the whole AES fragile and prone to internal rigging, tampering, retail and wholesale cheating all over the country. The infrastructure system may even be vulnerable to jamming, sabotage and other threats by some groups with the intent to cause a failure of election or manipulate election returns,” Tuazon said.
CenPEG also said the Comelec is technically and structurally ill-equipped to manage the complexities of the automation technology called precinct count optical scan-optical mark reader (PCOS-OMR), in effect making itself vulnerable to hacking and internal rigging, thus enhancing wholesale cheating.
Tuazon also expressed concern that with the way Comelec appears to be cutting corners and changing its calendar in its haste to automate the elections, it is uncertain that the poll body can install safeguards and security measures in the whole AES system.
The poll automation system chosen by the Comelec addresses election problems in the poll precinct. It would eliminate the possibility of ballot tampering and cheating in the counting of ballots in the precinct level. But we all know that the cheating in the precinct level is only a small portion of the poll rigging, mainly because party poll watchers are able to check the veracity of the ballots and the counting of the votes.
However, it is in the transfer of the ballot boxes to the municipal halls and provincial capitols, and in the subsequent canvassing of election returns where most of the cheating is done. The poll automation system does not assure that these could be prevented.
Under the poll automation project, the automated election results in the precinct level would be transmitted by cellular phone, landline or satellite at the end of voting hours. This stage is where human intervention will most likely affect or alter the outcome of the elections.
The Smartmatic spokesman said there would be no human intervention from that point on, but did not rule out human intervention during that crucial stage – the transfer of information from the precinct level to the central data base presumably inside the Comelec building. Human beings, not machines, would make the transmission through cellphones, landlines and satellites. That’s where the sleight-of-hand, the hocus pocus, the hacking, or whatever means of manipulation could occur.
As I pointed out in a March column, “Is RP ready for poll automation?” this system is not entirely problem-free, as shown in the experiences of other countries. In Florida two years ago, for example, a poorly designed voting machine led to 13% of voters not casting their vote for their desired candidates. In Finland, the lack of clear instructions resulted in 232 votes out of 12,234 not being counted because the voters failed to “validate’ their votes as required by the system. That could mean a serious discrepancy if you consider that millions of voters would be involved.
I can mention other problems that a full automation as early as next year can pose. First, millions of Filipinos, particularly in the far-flung areas, are not really computer-savvy. It may take time to familiarize them with the full poll automation process. Secondly, it may take much longer than one year to train and test 480,000 election clerks to manage voting and counting in the polling stations.
The Philippines’ current manual system of registration, voting and counting continues to create confusion during elections. What more of a system that is completely unknown to millions of voters, almost completely untested, and manned by insufficiently trained poll clerks?
The unavailability and unreliability of electricity in many rural areas in the Philippines can also pose a problem. How will the computerized election be held if power suddenly breaks down, as it often happens during elections in the Philippines?
The lack of sufficient testing may also be a problem. Like all computer systems, the poll automation system targeted for use by the Comelec has to be tested and re-tested, preferably in a real election. They used poll automation in the ARRM elections in Mindanao, but that only represented a small area.
Again, as I said earlier, don’t get me wrong. I am not against poll automation. It is high time that the country discard a voting and counting system that is outdated, open to cheating and lacks credibility. But the country’s leaders should make the transition gradual, making sure that everything is in place before making the jump from the old into the new.
The 2010 presidential election is crucial to the future of the Philippines. Millions of desperate Filipinos have pinned their hopes for change in that election. Politicians and pundits have warned of serious consequences of a failure in elections. I shudder at the thought of what a failed election, caused by a failed system, can do to the country.