Comelec must still dispel grave doubts about PCOS

If Comelec chief Sixto Brillantes says that last weekend’s dry run of automated voting machines was successful, so be it. Twenty Precinct Count Optical Scanners were tested in ten areas across the land, from switch-on to tally transmission. There were what Brillantes calls “minor glitches” but, he assures, these can be fixed by Election Day in May.

Like, the thermal paper spools got stuck inside because too big for the PCOS rollers. So the machine covers simply were opened, and the bobbins re-appended using good old reliable Mongol pencils. The Comelec already has purchased 82,000 spools for as many PCOS units, likely at its usual overprice. No problem, it will simply reorder the right size, at more overprices. Never mind the basic question of why the poll body to begin with is using thermal paper whose ink vanishes upon exposure to UV light, when it’s supposed to be the printed proof of the ballot count.

No problem too that five of the 20 test units could not take in ballots with creased edges. The soft cardboard stocks already have been bought. But the Comelec still has time to buy thicker ballot paper, at hundred millions of pesos more. Again, forget the point that the ballot-rejection rate was 25 percent, equivalent to 24,600 of 82,000 PCOS units, or 13 million of 52 million voters.

Immaterial was the downtime before the machines could function. As 72-year-old Brillantes conjectures, the units needed to be warmed up after prolonged storage. Disregard that the highest election official apparently doesn’t understand the technology. The PCOS are not vacuum tube-types, like TV sets of old, that need minutes of warm-up to function. Those are semiconductor-types, using integrated circuits and transistors. They take only a few seconds to “boot” or “initialize” or “load” the operating system. PCOS that need to be heated up are defective.

But then, Brillantes sincerely believes those bugs can be fixed. So critics of the PCOS and the Comelec had better focus on the truly serious stuff. Like:

• How can Venezuelan firm Smartmatic, supplier of the PCOS worth P9 billion, sell and run the machines when it is not certified to do so? The real PCOS hardware and software developer, Dominion Voting Systems of Canada, has rescinded Smartmatic’s license last April. That’s why the latter sued in Delaware. Brillantes is a lawyer, though he used to specialize solely in election cases. “Pera-pera lang ‘yan (It’s only about money),” he dismisses the Smartmatic-Dominion tiff. Does he mean that the Comelec, after giving Smartmatic P9 billion for unlicensed units, will pay Dominion probably billions more for the operating license? Without such permission, the Philippine government could be blacklisted globally for being the biggest technology pirate.

• And what about Smartmatic’s past and continuing contract breaches? The Election Automation Law of 2008 requires the voting machine supplier to be the developer; thus, it is to submit the source code, the program that runs the machine, for scrutiny against fraud or flaws. The Comelec-Smartmatic lease contract for 76,000 PCOS units in 2010 contained such proviso; so does the purchase deal of 2012. But now lawyer Brillantes admits without batting an eyelash that no source code has yet been turned over. Can he sincerely defend the illegal?

• And what of the Comelec’s flouting of government bidding rules and its own ballot-security measures, just to favor Smartmatic? It held two biddings for 82,000 CF (compact flash) memory cards, to embed the commands for the PCOS to read, tally, and transmit the votes. Twice a company called LDLA Marketing turned in the lowest bid, P33.5 milion. Yet twice too the Comelec disqualified it, the first time for lacking a notarization that wasn’t even required, the second for presumed financial incapability to fulfill a contract that big. Smartmatic didn’t join the two “failed biddings.” Yet the Comelec called for a negotiated purchase from the Venezuelan firm. For facade of transparency, LDLA again was asked to demonstrate its CF-card. Whereupon, its product was rejected because “hard to eject” from the PCOS. Never mind that in the 2010 election, when Smartmatic’s CF-cards went awry, it rushed to but half of the 76,000 replacements from none other than LDLA. So for this 2013 election, the Comelec will buy Smartmatic CF-cards — for P45.2 million, or P11.7 million higher than LDLA’s offer.

That’s not the only problem with the CF-cards. The Comelec spec was for the WORM-type (write once, read many), not the, ordinary, cheaper rewriteable kind. This sincerely is to avert tampering with the PCOS. But the supply deal with Smartmatic is for the rewriteable.

Oh well, as Kettering said, you can be sincere and still be stupid.

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Two things admirable about PETA: its popularizing Shakespeare via adaptations in Filipino; and sets designed for possible restaging in bare community halls, even basketball courts.

And PETA does both again, with the retelling of The Bard’s Twelfth Night as D’ Wonder Twins of Boac. The parody on the local film industry circa ’60s, by playwright Rody Vera, employs Shakespeare’s comedic mistaken identities and genders.

Runs on weekends till March 3. Maribel Legarda directs; Cris Villongco and Chrome Cosio lead the cast.

For details and tickets, call (02) 7256244, (0917) 5765400, or Ticket World 8919999; or e-mail [email protected].

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]