Comelec: No more mock elections

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will no longer conduct another mock election despite the glitches observed during the Feb. 2 mock polls.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said the report of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) had already validated the mock polls conducted in 20 voting centers in 10 areas across the country.

The glitches include the difficulties experienced by the Board of Election Inspectors (BOI) in keying in their pin codes in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines, rejection of some ballots by the machines and delay in the transmission of election results from the polling precincts to the canvassing centers.

This resulted in calls to go back to the manual system of elections in May.

The Comelec, however, argued that this would require the amendment of Republic Act 9369, which mandates the automation of the country’s elections.

With the TEC report, the Comelec has ruled out any chance that the May 13 polls will be done manually despite the absence of a certified source code — a human-readable instruction on how the PCOS machine should function.

Brillantes said the poll body could use the TEC report as a “justification” that the automation of the elections could push through, using the source code certified by Colorado-based independent firm SLI Global Solutions in 2011.

“One argument is that in 2010, we had an election although no one actually saw the source code. Nobody even knew what was inside the Central Bank (where the source code was supposedly kept),” he said.

Brillantes said what is important are the “binaries,” the machine-readable instruction in the PCOS machines.

“Manual is already impossible with the certification issued by TEC. We are going to proceed automated no matter what happens. (Whether) source code is there or not, (it is) not necessary (anymore),” he added.

The TEC, composed of the Comelec, Department of Science and Technology and Commission on Information and Communications Technology, was tasked by Republic Act 9369 to review and certify if the automated election system (AES), including its hardware and software components, is “operating properly, securely, and accurately” in accordance with the provisions of the law.

The assessment shall be based on the successful conduct of a field testing process, followed by a mock election; successful completion of audit on accuracy, functionality and security controls of the AES software and the development, provisioning and opera-tionalization of a continuity plan to cover risks to the AES at all points in the process so that failure of elections — whether at voting, counting or consolidation — may be avoided, among others.

The TEC, in a resolution, noticed the lack of certified source code but ruled that the AES complied with the law in general.

House opposition wary of poll chief

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez hit Brillantes for his continued cavalier attitude on the international dispute between Smartmatic, which was contracted by the Comelec to supply the PCOS machines, and Dominion Voting Systems that owns the software to run the equipment.

Suarez said Brillantes has been making useless retorts to the public whenever asked about how he is resolving the quarrel of the two foreign companies.

He said the poll chief threatened at one point to go manual in the counting of votes and did not the face the issue.

Suarez warned Brillantes not to take the issue and the reported glitches lightly.  –  With Paolo Romeroa