Is the Comelec ready?

Less than a month before the elections and I get the feeling Comelec isn’t quite ready. They still have to award the purchase of the thermal paper for the individual ballot printout and they have not quite decided on whether to use shopping malls for voting precincts.

Comelec chairman Andy Bautista must have known the enormity of the task before he accepted the appointment. Andy loves challenges, like being chairman of the PCGG, where he did better than many of his predecessors. But Comelec has a non movable deadline… Election Day.

Andy has to live with sins of the past. The past chairmen swept too many things under the rug even if it meant violating the Election Code. This time, the Supreme Court would no longer turn a blind eye on things like the printout of the voter’s ballot which is part of the Election Code.

Past Comelec chairmen simply threatened the Supreme Court with NoEl or no election and they got away with ignoring the requirements of the law. The past chairman also made a rather foolish decision to buy the PCOS machines after initially just leasing.

The Comelec purchased the 80,000 PCOS machines for P1.8 billion that were first used in the 2010 elections and used again for the 2013 elections. Buying those machines was a terribly bad decision.

In today’s digital world the accepted practice is to merely lease such computer equipment specially because the intended use is just once every three years. Why squander almost P2 billion in Filipino taxpayers’ money to buy the PCOS machines which gets outdated rather quickly.

As it turns out, Andy had to get new vote counting machines or VCMs for next month’s election. I texted him to ask about those machines and this was his response:

“Yes – we are leasing new machines which are an upgrade from those used in 2010 and 2013. To use an analogy, if we had an iPhone 5 before, we are using an iPhone 6 now and with new features to address challenges faced in 2010 and 2013.”

Renting a set of all-new voting machines cost the Comelec an additional P2.5 billion compared with leasing 23,000 optical mark reader (OMR) machines and refurbishing the 81,896 machines used in the 2010 and 2013 elections.

Those PCOS machines brilliantly bought by the past Comelec chairman will just rot in the warehouse. I do not believe the statement of Andy that they will use the old PCOS machines in the 2019 elections. In chairman Andy’s own words, those old PCOS machines have had some challenges the new machines will address. Nag iPhone 6 ka na, babalik ka pa sa iphone5, chairman Andy?

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III wondered what would happen to those 80,000 PCOS machines the Comelec earlier bought. Pimentel heads the joint congressional oversight committee on the automated election system.

The senator said the Comelec should disclose what it plans to do with the PCOS machines it purchased. “Do we not have the diligence of a good father?” he asked in a phone interview with the Inquirer last year.

As usual, the Comelec justified leasing the VCMs because they “are running out of time and this is the most viable, practical and safest option to pursue,” chairman Andy told a press briefing.

Chairman Andy said the new machines come with a built-in “self-diagnosing lens” which alerts a machine operator to insert a cleaning sheet if the lens has already become dirty.

The machines also have a special feature

for persons with disability. After inserting the ballot into the machine, a PWD can use the headphones to listen as his votes are read out to him or her by the machine.

The UV mark sensors in the VCM would also be activated, unlike in the 2010 elections when they were deactivated “kasi nagka-problema tayo [noon] sa printing nung UV mark so we were worried baka magkaroon ng maling reading at i-reject [ang ballot].”

The other very serious computer problem of the Comelec has to do with the safekeeping of voter’s confidential personal records. Last month, a group of hackers managed to breach the servers of the Comelec.

Trend Micro, a leading company in the field of antivirus cloud computing security and Internet content security software, claims the hacking exposed fingerprint data of registered voters, as well as the 1.3 million records of Filipino overseas voters, which includes passport numbers and expiry dates.

It was sheer negligence of Comelec’s IT people to store sensitive personal information in plain text format, without any kind of encryption. Encrypting sensitive personal information in databases is usually a common sense practice in IT.

Comelec is downplaying the breach, claiming no sensitive information was compromised. But cyber security expert Trend Micro is saying that’s not the case. The hacking leaves all 55 million registered voters open to potential fraud via phishing attacks and cyber crime schemes.

The incompetence of Comelec’s IT people shouldn’t surprise anyone. They earlier mishandled biometric data of millions of voters so that voters had to have their biometrics taken again to be able to vote. How can we now believe Comelec claims that their system cannot be hacked by parties with intention

to cheat and falsify election results?

This unfortunate incident will also make it more difficult to convince people to agree to a national ID system. Even for people who are convinced a national ID will be a good thing to have, how can we trust our sensitive data to government IT people who are less than diligent in safeguarding private information?

Anyway, the worse job in the country today has to be Andy Bautista’s. It is not going to take too much for problems to crop up on Election Day that will impact on the credibility of the exercise. The tight race for the next president will also keep tempers short and at boiling point.

What Andy has going in his favor is his management experience. Andy is not just a lawyer, but someone who has experience in running a business organization.

Andy’s humility and mild temperament in contrast to his predecessors will also help him. We have seen how he has avoided senseless arguments, and never loses sight of the deadline he must meet.

Comelec must now make sure its computer system will work, cannot be hacked to frustrate the people’s will and is compatible with the systems to be used by the networks and such groups as PPCRV and Namfrel. The trust level for the Comelec running an honest election is still low and the probability of failure moderate to high. Computer glitches will heighten suspicion the count is being manipulated.

We all have a stake in the credibility of this election. We all have to work together with Comelec to make sure the conduct and the results of next month’s election will be respected by the people… our democratic system depends on it. Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco