I TOTALLY agree with the Citizens for Clean and Credible Elections, a newly organized watchdog group that is also known as the C3E Coalition, when it said that Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. should not be given any officially sanctioned role in the 2016 presidential elections.
The C3E Coalition specifically urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to ban Smartmatic from the public bidding it will conduct for the procurement of 23,000 additional precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to be used in the 2016 polls.
It also asked the Comelec not to engage Smartmatic’s services in “refurbishing” the 82,000 PCOS machines that the poll body has in its possession.
The C3E Coalition includes the country’s top information-technology (IT) experts. Before this coalition was formed, the foremost critics of Smartmatic’s highly defective PCOS machines were the Philippine Computer Society (PCS) and the Tanggulang Demokrasya, or Tandem.
These groups came up with comprehensive reports on what went wrong in the conduct of the automation system operated by Smartmatic International Corp. in the 2010 elections. One report, prepared by the PCS, documented the “clear and unmistakable failures of Smartmatic and the Comelec.”
Tandem’s technical working group said one of the most serious failures in the 2010 elections was “the total disregard by the Comelec of the essential safeguards required under the Automation Law.”
The PCOS machines’ glitches and weaknesses screwed up the results of the 2010 elections, especially at the local levels in many places in the country.
Former Comelec Commissioner Augusto Lagman, himself a computer expert, repeatedy declared after the 2010 elections that all those defects and failures have remained uncorrected. (Lagman’s appointment as commissioner, incidentally, was not renewed by Malacañang.)
Lagman said the fact that the systemic flaws are still there should be reason enough to condemn the use of those PCOS machines. He also said the Comelec should not have renewed its contract with Smartmatic “because the technical glitches have not been addressed.”
Many believe, including the country’s top IT experts, that, with the redeployment of these defective machines, the country would only end up systematizing the subversion of the electorate’s will in the next presidential elections.
But what are those technical glitches and glaring failures? In a video presentation two years ago, some of those defects and weaknesses were summarized, as follows:
- The provisions of the election law in the voting process were not followed. Instead, some of the vital features of the automated system were disabled and covered up. And because the voter-verifiability list feature was disabled, the voter had no way of knowing if his or her vote was actually read by the PCOS machine.
- The PCOS internal ultraviolet ballot scanner was deliberately disabled, and the substitute handheld scanners were never used.
- The Comelec issued Resolution 8766 on March 4, 2010, declaring that the use of digital signatures was no longer required.
This was contrary to what the election law required, that “the election returns transmitted electronically and digitally signed shall be considered as official election results and shall be used as basis for the canvassing of votes and the proclamation of a candidate.”
Null and void
AS a result, election returns; statements of votes in the municipalities, cities and provinces, as well as those at the national level; and corresponding certificates of canvass from anywhere have no digital signatures. Without these signatures, all proclamations are null and void. (Does this mean all the winners in the 2010 elections are now illegally occupying their positions?)
The implementation of the Smartmatic system deviated greatly from accepted computerization practices. For one thing, the system was put into operation in only 10 months, from the day of the award to election day. There was no pilot-testing in a municipality or city, as required by law. The great disaster occurred on May 3, 2010. It was called a “Black Monday, when small-scale testing of the system yielded grave errors and defects in many localities.”
By entering into a contract with Smartmatic, the Comelec, in effect, delegated the exclusive powers granted to it by the 1987 Constitution to a private, foreign company based in the Netherlands. The more appropriate word would be “abdicated.”
The Comelec, through its contract with Smartmatic, in effect, outsourced the supervision of the Philippine electoral system, including the counting, consolidation and canvassing of votes, among other things.
At best, the Comelec performed a subsidiary role to Smartmatic in the elections. It, in effect, transformed itself into the secretariat of Smartmatic, which, to all intents and purposes, usurped the poll body’s functions and powers.
The entire 2010 elections were conducted not under the Constitution, but under the contract with Smartmatic.
And now Smartmatic has just announced with a bit of alacrity that it is “willing and able” to once again offer its services to the Comelec by way of “refurbishing” the defective 82,000 PCOS machines it managed to sell to the Comelec for several billions of pesos.
On November 4 the Comelec held a prebidding conference with the intention to buy an additional 23,000 PCOS machines and having the defective 82,000 PCOS machines already in its hands “refurbished.”
But the C3E Coalition wants an outright ban on Smartmatic enforced for the disastrous roles it played in the last two elections. It warned that “there is a great possibility of large-scale electronic manipulation of the 2016 presidential elections if Smartmatic remains as the supplier of the automated system.”
The coalition cited documented technical glitches and PCOS-related irregularities during the 2010 and 2013 elections.
Hermenigildo Estralla Jr., one of the C3E Coalition’s leaders, pooh-poohed Smartmatic’s claim of being a global leader in the manufacture and supply of automated voting machines.
“Smartmatic is a mere reseller and not a manufacturer of automated-election systems,” he said.
E-mail: omerta_bdc@yahoo.com.