PCOS pre-programmed?

WHILE most of mainstream media friends hailed the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the PCOS for a job - well done, seemingly isolated critical voices are presenting disturbing data online. The percentage of votes per senator was uniform and consistent nationwide as the counting proceeded.

Is it possible for Grace Poe to consistently get 11.3 percent of the vote in all regions? The number 2 winner Loren Legarda consistently had 10.4 percent in all regions? Next, Alan Peter Cayetano got 9.8 percent, and so on. Yup, the sharing was consistent in all the top 15 in all regions, with no consideration of bailiwicks.

I began posting these figures and more yesterday in our Facebook group Maghisgot Kitag Politika, Bay for those who would want to look closer into what I am saying. I also intend to post these in my blogs. Just check out inbetweencolumns.wordpress.com and politika2013. wordpress.com from time to time.

This is the second election we used the controversial PCOS machines and several computer experts were ready to crunch the figures as these appeared online. I just want more thinking Filipinos to intelligently evaluate the figures and judge for themselves.

The consistent percentage they noticed is only possible if the counting was pre-programmed to produce the results that officially came out. Tell me if I am wrong mathematically, but the figures looked so computer-perfect.

The voting in each town, province, and region vary. A senatorial candidate would get more votes, for instance, from his bailiwick. When the count from these areas would reach the Comelec central office, the percentage should not be consistent.

We know in pre-PCOS days that voting percentage are different every province and region.

I would grant the possibility that more elaborate algorithms could have been put in place to blind us from the consistency we are seeing now. Perhaps in 2016, but now we are looking at highly suspicious consistent sharing of the votes in all regions.

*** AES Watch is a broad citizens’ election watchdog comprising 40 organizations, institutions, NGOs, IT professionals, researchers, and academics. Launched in January 2010, it monitored and documented the 2010 and 2013 automated elections.

According to AES Watch: “By committing more errors than those recorded in 2010, by making arbitrary and highlyirregular decisions during canvassing, and proclaiming presumed winning candidates prematurely the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has turned the second automated elections from bad to worse – a technology and political disaster. Aside from Comelec’s non-compliance – yet again – of the election law and the technical glitches, there was an unprecedented large-scale vote buying.”

In a statement, the group further pointed out that: “While in 2010 Comelec’s non-compliance of major election law provisions and ToR happened largely before the polls, today not only were these violations (e.g., absence of independent source code review) repeated but we are witness as well to arbitrary and highly-questionable post-election decisions such as proclaiming “winning” senatorial candidates based only on 20 percent of canvassed election results. This is compounded by the latest decision to transport un-transmitted CF cards direct to the NBOC thus bypassing the legal ladderized canvassing – a procedure that is also prone to human tampering.

These problems became manifest in the mid-term elections especially because of Comelec’s repeated non-compliance to what the law requires and its disabling of all major security and integrity features as well as safeguards: a valid license to operate a foreign-provided software; a source code and its independent review by the people through political parties and NGOs six months to one year before election; voter-friendly, transparency and verifiability feature; a valid digital signature; nonWORM (write once, read many) CF memory devices, independent testing of PCOS machines for trustworthiness and accuracy, reliable mock elections and FTS, and effective random manual audit (RMA).”

*** I have a mouthful to say about the local and national results. But these will have to wait two days for my next Bisaya column and another week in this space because I want us to focus our attention first on the integrity of the PCOS, how it counted the votes, and the integrity of the mid-term election in general. Let’s not just accept Comelec and Malacanang talk points hook, line and sinker.

The Comelec had various reasons for not getting experts analyze the PCOS source code way before the May 13 elections. Could it be that the Comelec and its controversial chairman and PCOS advocate Sixto Brillantes Jr. do not want a smart aleck to discover the pre-programming?

Let’s grant the Comelec the benefit of believing its excuses before May 13. But somebody in Comelec simply dismissed the possibility that there would be those smart enough to crunch figures, brave enough to and spread these post these online.