Call Brillantes’ bluff

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

2/13/2013

Daily Tribune

If a survey were done today, would Filipinos still believe that computer voting is the best system that the Comelec and Smartmatic claim it is or would be? Remember the tons and tons of propaganda the Comelec and Smartmatic churned out a year on to the 2010 elections and some more after about the congratulatory messages the Philippines got from all over the world, including kudos from the US and European embassies, for having "finally" having automated elections? I remember my criticism of my once, personally respected Comelec official lawyer Ferdinand Rafanan who, taken in by Smartmatic's sales talk vouched for the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and said they are "perfectly tamper proof." He has disappeared from the scene reportedly due to utter shame, having discovered the truth about the machines.

Manual voting and counting are best. This is not just local wisdom. Countries like Germany and Switzerland, and lately Ireland, decided to go back to manual, after discovering the treachery to democratic elections computer or e-voting (electronic voting) and counting.
The Wiki says of Switzerland's voting: "There are no voting machines in Switzerland; all votes are counted by hand. Every municipality randomly recruits a number of citizens who have the duty of counting the ballots… after people sort the ballots … to count banknotes); or the ballots are weighed by a precision balance. Vote counting is usually accomplished within five or six hours, but votes for parliamentary elections from the citizens of large cities (Zurich or Geneva for example) may take much longer."

It is now known in the Philippines that Germany's Federal Supreme Court (SC) thumbed down electronic voting in 2009, ruling that the use of the electronic voting machines contradicts the public character of elections and noting the machines' shortcomings. The decision stemmed from a filing by political scientist Joachim Wiesner and physicist Ultrick Wiesner, father and son, asserting that the system was not transparent as voters "could not check what actually happened to his vote, being actually asked to blindly trust the technology… (that) the voting machines …do not print out receipts" and results could be manipulated. Those same infirmities are present in the PCOS machines and operation here today, and the lack of receipt is a particularly notable similarity to our complaints here.

The Philippines' election system's flaw was never in the precinct manual voting and counting, which was wholly more transparent and secure due to the open and public writing and casting of the ballot, the open and public counting displayed on a board before election, party and citizens-public monitors, with signed and thumb-marked multiple copies of canvass sheets. Comelec and Smarmatic's system today offer none of these publicly visible recording tools and means. Everything happens in the PCOS which uses hardware that violates the security provisions in the law: The presence of a plug-in port outlawed in the law, the use of rewritable cards where the law required WORM (write once read many), no digital signature of teacher nor machine, no itemized receipt, among many other clear violations.
The late information technology pioneer and election watchdog Mano Alcuaz of Systems Consult Inc. exposed the scam of automated voting and counting in the precinct level.

Here are quotes from Mano's July 2009 article: "'Automated election fraud' … can be divided into two parts: 1. Retail cheating in the counting and preparation of precinct election returns; 2. Wholesale fraud in the transmission and canvassing at the municipal, district, city and provincial levels… The beauty of the old system of writing names of candidates voted for, public reading of votes in front of watchers and citizens, tallying and manual preparation of election returns was that it was visible. At times there could have been fraud. But it was visible… In the new OMR system voters will feed the ballot into the machine the next thing they will see is the printed election return. Whether their votes were properly counted they will not know. Transparency at the precinct level is gone."

Automation election law proponents brazenly run roughshod on the automated election law, skirted and removed safeguards (criminal and impeachable, which should be filed), lie massively to the public in collaboration with some members of media. Yet, the Comelec commissioners and Smartmatic enjoy impunity, retired commissioners are rewarded with sinecures or Comelec consultancies. The entire corrupt system, from Malacañang to the SC (sitting for three years on petitions against the PCOS) down to mainstream media, foist "smart-magic" over the nation. But over time and with realistic experiences, truisms reassert themselves: on the voting and counting, to see is to believe. Just as hi-tech Germany and Switzerland reverted to the manual voting and counting system, the Philippines should too. Let's call Brillantes' bluff. Manual voting — it's the only real democratic alternative.

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