Can we have unwasted 2016 elections?

With the 2016 elections just around the corner, who can be sure of clean elections, of our candidates’ votes being honestly counted? Can we ever taste the fruits of our most sacred democratic process – our elections?

Comelec chairman Andy Bautista has been making the rounds of newspaper offices and other institutions to convince people that there is hope for a better future with the Comelec’s decision to lease new Smartmatic optical mark readers (OMRs) at P7.9-billion rather than have the Smartmatic 82,000 PCOS machines (probably rusting) in warehouses being rented monthly at P936,320 refurbished. The PCOS were used in the 2010 presidential election and 2013 midterm polls.

Former senator and Philippine Red Cross chairman and CEO Richard “Dick” Gordon answers all three questions with a resounding “no!”. In a conversation I had (which I taped) with him, he said, “With the way the Supreme Court has been sitting on the cases filed regarding the automated elections and the Comelec again leaving to Smartmatic the fate of our elections — I fear that 2016 would not be any different from the previous elections – our taxpayers’ money wasted on substandard and dubious Smartmatic PCOS machines; votes not only uncounted but diverted due to source code manipulations; elected officials being sworn in not with the people’s mandate but by the power of corrupted and corrupt computer programming.

“If we, you, and our people, do not act now and force the Comelec to fully and properly implement the automated election system, we just have to accept the fact that we will be again hoodwinked in 2016.”

As the reader will note, I am focusing on the source code, a vital component of the automated elections system.

DMT: As the author of Republic Act 9369 or the Amended Automated Elections Systems Law, how would you assess the implementation of the Comelec on the law in the two previous automated elections that were held?

RG: In our Constitution, the Philippines is a republic and democratic state and all government authority emanates from the people. This was the bedrock upon which the law was crafted. When we were still having manual elections, this country had seen election after election that were severely criticized as dishonest, with all the accusations of vote-buying and fraud all the time. That’s why we pushed for the automation of elections, to restore the integrity of our political exercise. Unfortunately, due to the Comelec’s failure to implement the law properly, the two automated elections that we had in 2010 and in 2013 were severely compromised. We still have not achieved clean, honest, orderly and credible elections.

DMT: Where did the Comelec go wrong in conducting the automated elections?  

RG: The security of the elections and the sanctity of the ballot should never be manipulated and undermined, which is why we put in and enshrined thereat several safeguards when we crafted this law. One of these safeguards is the source code testing and review. The law mandates that it must be made available for review by interested political parties or groups but they did not do that. Having failed to implement the safeguards, the Comelec made a mockery of the elections. But even before that, the Comelec itself must test it to see if it works. The Comelec did neither.

DMT: What’s the source code and why is it important?

RG: The source code is the human readable representation of the instructions that control the operation of a computer. Computers are composed of hardware (the physical devices themselves) and software (which controls the operation of the hardware). The software instructs the computer how to operate: without software, the computer is useless. Source code is the human readable form in which software is written by computer programmers. The source code is usually written in a programming language that is arcane and incomprehensible to non-specialists but to a computer programmer, the source code is the master blueprint that reveals and determines how the machine will behave.

DMT: Meaning?

RG: The source code in voting machines is in some ways analogous to the procedures provided to election workers. Procedures are instructions that are provided to people; for instance, the procedures provided to poll workers list a sequence of steps that all workers should follow to open the polls on election morning. The source code contains instructions, not for people. But for the computers running the election. For instance the source code for a voting machine determines the steps the machine will take when the polls are opened on election morning.

The review and testing of the source code is so crucial and vital to the successful implementation of the AES and in the assurance of a clean, honest and transparent election as it will dictate how votes will be read, appreciated and counted.

DMT: Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said the source code for the 2016 elections will be open for initial review by October 15, and it will be again opened for review by expert representatives of political parties and organizations by Feb. 20, 2016 at the latest. Will this satisfy the requirements of the law?

RG: I’m afraid it does not. Section 14 of the law mandates that once an automated election system is selected for implementation, the Comelec shall promptly make the source code of that technology available and open to any interested party or groups which may conduct their own review thereof. This provision is not complied with if the period of time given for the people to review the source code is insufficient. A source code for a simple automated payment system uses 700 plus pages when printed out. It took at last six months to review and test the same. That’s just for a simple automatic banking transaction. Imagine doing this for a system that would handle votes for multiple candidates for multiple national and local positions. According to IT experts, the printed source code for the automated elections system would fill the back of a Ford F150.

I seriously doubt that the Comelec would be able to comply with the mandated section 11 of RA No. 8345 to certify, not later than three months before the date of the electoral exercises, among other things, the successful completion of a source code review; a certification that the source code is kept in escrow with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and a certification that the source code reviewed is one and the same as that used by the equipment.

During the December 4, 2014 hearing conducted by the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Elections, then Comelec Commissioner Sixto Brillantes admitted that there was no source code review in 2010 and in 2013; the source code only became available two days before the 2013 elections so it was too late for the conduct of a review. The source code for the 2010 elections was only delivered two years after the elections. It’s as if the Comelec never learned. Their actions are again too late. It is as if they want the source code not to be reviewed.

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