“97 percent of Filipinos were satisfied with the overall performance of election automation.”
by Ducky Paredes
Social Weather Stations (SWS) says that three out of four Filipinos are satisfied with the conduct of the country’s first-ever computerized balloting held last May.
This second-quarter 2010 survey shows 75 percent of Filipinos approving the conduct of the May 10 elections. Conducted from June 25 to 28, the SWS survey showed that 70 percent of Filipinos were also satisfied with the role of Smartmatic-TIM in ensuring that the 70,000-plus machines used last May 10—the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) units—worked properly.
Apparently thanks to these PCOS machines leased by Smartmatic-TIM to the government, public dissatisfaction with the Comelec—as reflected in the same SWS survey—fell dramatically to 15 percent in last May’s computerized polls as against the high dissatisfaction rating of 35 percent and 32 percent, respectively, in the manual elections of 2004 and 2007. Mahar Mangahas of SWS notes that the Comelec’s satisfaction rating this year is the highest compared to the conduct of previous national polls.
The SWS survey results also reveal that a majority of Filipinos were satisfied with how the Comelec and other institutions handled various aspects of this year’s national balloting, such as maintaining peace and order, voter registration, and information dissemination about the conduct of the automated polls.
In 2004, 53 percent were satisfied and 35 percent were dissatisfied with the conduct of the May 2004 elections. In 2007, some 51 percent were satisfied and 32 percent dissatisfied with the conduct of the May 2007 elections.
On top of these favorable results for the Comelec in the SWS survey, a separate survey done by StratPOLLS from June 6-9 showed that 97 percent of Filipinos were satisfied with the overall performance of election automation. The StratPOLLS survey showed 100% satisfaction rating with poll automation in the cities of Manila, Makati, Valenzuela and Las Pinas.
The success of the May 10 elections with the use of Smartmatic-TIM’s PCOS machines and AES technology should make the government strongly consider buying these tried-and-tested pieces of equipment—rather than conducting another public bidding—to save precious government resources and ensure that the next national elections in 2013, along with future ballotings, would be free from fraud and their results widely acceptable to the public.
Imagine the huge expenses that the government would incur were it to return the PCOS machines it leased from Smartmatic-TIM, and conduct yet another public bidding, not only for the machines to be used nationwide, but the automation technology as well for the 2013 elections. As they say, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
The PCOS machines were leased by Smartmatic TIM to the government for P7.2 billion for the May 10, 2010 polls, but the contract provided an option for us to purchase them for use in subsequent elections for just P2 billion more. If the Comelec were to buy these PCOS machines, it would spend just P4 billion to P5 billion for services for the 2013 midterm elections, instead of P11 billion—which was what the May 10 elections cost us.
Moreover, the Supreme Court, in upholding the validity of the Comelec-Smartmatic TIM contract, took note of the Special Bids and Awards Committee-Technical Working Group (SBAC-TWG) report that Smartmatic-TIM’s AES system and PCOS machines had passed all end-to-end demo tests using a 26-item criteria, including an accuracy rating of at least 99.955%.
Losing bidders in the Comelec’s automated election project have filed a graft complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman against executives of Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM. The group, Computer Society of the Philippines, has alleged that many AES security features were abandoned or disabled during the elections to pave the way for widescale cheating. This group has been fueling the silly notion that there could have been a renegade band of Comelec-accredited technicians tampering with the election results by pre-programming the PCOS machines.
But how could that be done when every PCOS machine was under the joint control of the Comelec, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Smartmatic-TIM? The machines were only online for one to two minutes for the transmission of the results, and used a security system similar to or even better than those used by banks for their Internet or ATM operations.
Dennis Villorente, director of the DOST Advanced Science and Tech Institute, testified before an inquiry done by the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms led by then Rep. Teodoro Locsin during the 14th Congress, that the PCOS machines garnered 100% accuracy reading results during the tests done by the DOST ahead of the elections.
Al Vitangol III, a certified hacking forensic investigator, said during the same House probe, on the other hand, that counting results were automatically saved in write-protected files in the Compact Flash (CF) Cards and thus could not be tampered with.
Demonstrations during the House committee inspection trip to Smartmatic TIM’s Cabuyao, Laguna plant showed that (1) PCOS machines did not count additional transmissions of the same ERs, (2) audit logs could not be tampered with because the machine that was tested did not start up when it was fed its CF Card whose log had been edited, (3) efforts to delete a file or write a file on the Protected Backup CF Card both failed.
The Computer Society, the main oppositor to the Comelec’s buying the PCOS machines is headed by Leo Quisumbing, who was general manager of Avante International Technology, a New Jersey-based firm pioneering in smart card technology. Avante was among the losing bidders in the AES project.
* * *
It is stupid for Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda to argue that the e-vat on tolls was ordered by an executive order of Gloria Arroyo, which was, however, never implemented by her. So, since Gloria has been demonized as being the President from hell by Lacierda himself, why should the heaven-sent Noynoy government do what was ordered (but never implemented) by the GMA administration. What Noynoy wants to do, Noynoy must answer for, and no excuses. Certainly, to say that this was something that Gloria wished on us has to be the silliest argument!
By the way, a toll is a government tax that pays for the road built by a BOT contractor! Is it legal to have a tax (e-vat) on a tax?
# # # #
hvp 08.15.10
Post a Comment