More than 4 out of 10 expect cheating

There are many reasons why the Smartmatic PCOS machines cannot be trusted. The demand of concerned citizens for receipts has been ignored. Safety features have been removed and there has been no sign that it will be restored. No wonder a survey by Pulse Asia last month showed that four out of 10 Filipinos expect cheating in the May elections.

Yet Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma says the public has nothing to fear. “The safeguards against fraud are in place.” Frankly this contradicts what has been happening in the past few months with elections just around the corner. The question is how Comelec intends to remove doubts and fears about cybercheating when Comelec has turned down even a minimum but necessary demand like a receipt for votes.

I remember Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista saying in a conference with Philippine STAR that Comelec cannot guarantee hacking whether coming from inside or outside.

If it cannot guarantee there will be no hacking what is the assurance for? We will either have a clean and honest elections or we will not.

He also claimed that the Comelec is doing a roadshow on how the vote counting machines work. Hmm. How? With one or two machines? He must be joking. And what about the thousands of other machines that the public will not see? That is the objectionable characteristic of automated electoral systems – you cannot trace where the cheating will come from. A single computer expert alone can change a feature of the source code. And one or two machines will not show how it will in fact be done. This is bad faith to say there will be no fraud by demonstrating on two machines, or that there will be no receipts or safety measures.

I agree with him that it is important that people understand how the VCM works but what if they don’t. As I have said in a previous article, voters are not techies. And yet Bautista insists that “voters will understand how the VCM works.

“I won’t say that cheating is impossible because there is no system that cannot be hacked. But I can say that since 2010, there is no evidence that there has been cheating using the PCOS machines,” he said.

I don’t know where he was in 2010 and 2013 but the list of hacking and wrong counting is long and they have not been resolved. And here we are going into another exercise.

“PCOS is short for precinct count optical scan machines used in the 2010 and 2013 elections and basically works the same way as VCM. Automating the elections was meant to prevent manipulation by counting votes faster. I may be computer illiterate but I would not know how faster counting will be more accurate.”

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I am glad that re-electionist senatorial candidate Richard Gordon has filed a mandamus with the Supreme Court to order the Comelec to issue voting receipts.

“As an independent constitutional body, the (Comelec) is tasked with ensuring the integrity and credibility of elections. Now, it is up to the Supreme Court to act as final arbiter in disputes of this nature,” Coloma said. Is he passing the buck to the Supreme Court?

Gordon was one of the main sponsors of Republic Act 9369 or the automated election system law and cochairman of the congressional oversight committee on poll automation. I know that filing the mandamus has been in his mind not just for giving receipts but also for other violations of the law in 2010 and 2013 including why the source code was kept secret.

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This is why several countries have stopped using automated electoral systems. They have stopped discussions on cyber technicalities. In the end it was a principle involved that “a voter must understand using his common sense the process of voting up to the time his vote is counted.” Other than that, the election would be unconstitutional.

I have excerpted the relevant part of the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. As far as this column is concerned we should end discussions about VCMs or voters receipts or malfunctioning machines and just go manual. Voting is such an essential act of citizenship it should be understood by common sense not technical knowledge.

“The Federal Constitutional Court rendered judgment on two complaints concerning the scrutiny of an election, which were directed against the use of computer-controlled voting machines (so-called voting computers) in the 2005 Bundestag election of the 16th German Bundestag (see German press release no. 85/2008 of 25 September 2008).

The Second Senate decided that the use of electronic voting machines requires that the essential steps of the voting and of the determination of the result can be examined by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject.

This requirement comes from the principle of the public nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG)), which prescribes that all essential steps of an election are subject to the possibility of public scrutiny unless other constitutional interests justify an exception. Accordingly it is, admittedly, constitutionally unobjectionable that § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act (Bundeswahlgesetz – BWG) permits the use of voting machines.

However, the Federal Voting Machines Ordinance (Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung) is unconstitutional because it does not ensure that only such voting machines are permitted and used which meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections.

According to the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, the computer-controlled voting machines used in the election of the 16th German Bundestag did not meet the requirements which the constitution places on the use of electronic voting machines.

In a post in the social media BayanKo adviser Jose Alejandrino stressed that Comelec was intended as an independent body to insulate it from partisan politics. Its principal role is to ENFORCE ALL LAWS AND REGULATIONS relative to the conduct of fair and free elections in the country. That is not what Comelec is doing.

Comelec chair Andy Bautista said he could not guarantee there won’t be hacking or cheating at the next May elections at the same time that Comelec refuses to institute the security features required by law.

With Bautista talking at two ends of his mouth – his declaration and the absence of security features have merely increased public suspicion about the results of the elections.

Why is Comelec doing this? My guess is it really wants failed elections. For what purpose, we do not know. But whatever its game plan is, it can backfire.