Digital signatures in PCOS machines to be used again in 2013

MANILA, Philippines - The digital signatures in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines will be used again in the 2013 midterm polls despite opposition from critics, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said the other day.

Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle said the poll body would reactivate the digital signatures in the PCOS machines but they could not give in to the demands of some critics to get the signatures of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in advance.

“They were claiming that there were no digital signatures in 2010. It’s not true,” he said.              

Tagle explained that there is danger in taking the BEI’s digital signatures in advance because there is a possibility that they would not report for work come election day.

“So what happened was that they put their signatures on the day of election, when they arrived at the polling precincts. That’s what we would be doing in 2013,” he added.

Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the purpose of the digital signature is to “authenticate or approve an electronic data message or electronic document.”

Digitally signed election returns are official election returns and basis for canvassing of votes and proclamation of a candidate. Digitally signed certificates of canvass, on the other hand, are official election results and used as basis for proclamation of a candidate.

In the 2010 elections, the election returns and certificates of canvass were digitally signed, according to Sarmiento.

Tagle also announced that Smartmatic International Corp. had won the bidding for the supply of 15,000 transmission modems worth P154 million to be used in the PCOS machines.

Comelec to save P160 M

The Comelec will save around P160 million after the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) had issued a resolution allowing the reuse of some 57,000 ballot boxes used in the 2010 elections.

“The PET has released more than 57,000 ballot boxes so we will be saving millions of pesos. The number of ballot boxes that we have to purchase is lesser now,” Sarmiento said.

The ballots are the subject of an electoral protest filed before PET by now Interior Secretary Mar Roxas against Vice President Jejomar Binay.

The Comelec had been petitioning the PET to release the ballot boxes so they could be used in next year’s polls. Without these ballot boxes, the poll body will have to buy more than 80,000 units amounting to P290,214,400.

But because of the PET decision, Sarmiento said the poll body will have to spend only around P56 million to buy more than 20,000 new ballot boxes.

In a 15-page resolution issued last Dec. 4, PET granted the request of the Comelec to retrieve 57,255 of the 76,340 ballot boxes used in the 2010 elections.

Meanwhile, poll watchdog Automated Election System (AES) Watch yesterday asked the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on poll automation to move for a new election technology provider, saying the squabble between Smartmatic and the Dominion Voting System will doom next year’s polls.

“Automated elections in the country have become a private enterprise and a money making industry,” said AES Watch spokesman Nelson Celis.

He said that Comelec would be using “pirated technology” next year because of the termination by Dominion of its licensing agreement with Smartmatic last May 23.

“With the agreement’s termination, Comelec will use a pirated technology for the May 2013 elections if it decides to honor a purchase contract for the Venezuelan company’s 80,000 PCOS voting machines without a license,” Celis added.

The PCOS machines are powered by the system of Dominion.