(The Daily Tribune)
Link: http://www.tribune.net.ph/
Insisting that a parallel and manual count at the precinct level would bring about credible elections, an elite group of businessmen, who are mostly identified with the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), yesterday called a press conference at the Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan City, putting additional pressure on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to allow a parallel count of the ballots in the precinct level.
The press conference was carried live on the Lopez cable network yesterday morning.
There were hints from some members of the group that, apart from coming up with an open letter to the Comelec, massive protest actions will be employed.
Earlier, there was staged in front of the Comelec, the so-called “Jericho” march, which harks back to the biblical Jericho walls that crumbled.
The business groups warned of massive protests to be staged but failed to state whether these would be staged before the polls, or after the polls.
The group, led by the Makati Business Club (MBC), wants a parallel manual count of the May 10 automated polls, stressing that the manual count will usher in credibility and acceptability of the May 10 election results.
The poll commissioners, as well as Malacañang, has taken the position that a parallel manual count at this stage of the poll preparations is well nigh impossible and “unnecessary.”
Fears of electoral fraud and machine failure were cited by the group as dangers in automation.
Agusto Lagman, an IT expert, pointed out that the trend today in Europe and the United States is to return to manual count, as automated counting machines have already been found to be unreliable, especially after the controversy over the George W. Bush-Al Gore Florida count by the automated polls.
MBC chairman Ramon del Rosario spoke of the open letter that he said has been signed, not just by the business groups, but also the presidential candidates.
“We support it (parallel manual count) since we know what automation entails and we know the dangers that can be found in automation,” Del Rosario said, adding that even in business practice, when corporations switch systems from manual to automation, such is done in stages and they do not drop the manual system while testing automation.
He deplored the move of the Comelec to go all out on nationwide automated polls.
Lagman, for his part, brought up the many problems and dangers of the automated system that makes use of the Precinct Count Optical Scan, as well as the fact that only Smartmatic holds the keys--or the passwords.
Lagman recalled that during the elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), in a place called Wao, one machine registered a zero vote and when this was reporred to the Comelec and Smartmatic, which also conducted the automated polls, it was Smartmatic in Manila that “fixed” up the results of that machine.
Lagman pointed to this as an example of how the results of the vote could be manipulated from a faraway site, as it is only Smartmatic that has control of all the keys.
Another danger, it was stressed, was the fact that even as the law states that Comelec would have to make available the source code of the machines, this was never done by the poll body.
A passionate Ernesto Ordonez, who represents an agricultrual group, and who has endorsed the open letter, said: “We do not want failure and we do not want cheating.”
The group also claimed that it would not take too long for the results of the elections if the count is done manually at the precinct level, and would only include three positions: the presidency, the vice presidency and the mayoralty.
The IT experts also joined in while expressing grave doubts over the the results of the automated elections, citing that both the Comelec and Smartmatic lack experience in conducting automated polls.
Roberto Verzola of Halalang Marangal raised the possibility of that many of the ballots printed by the National Printing Office may well be misread, or not read at all by the PCOS machines.
Verzola said the ballots may have been misprinted, considering the reported displacements of the ultraviolet security markings on the ballots.
Verzola said that the ovals as printed, may have been misaligned by few minute centimers which would then not be read by the machine.
Lagman warned of major glitches in the May elections saying that this is a first time for Smartmatic to implement the PCOS technology, stressing that it is only the Philippines that has jumped from fully manual to fully automated polls, which brings in more danger.
The Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino resident IT expert, Joey de Venecia, who is running for a Senate sear, yesterday said that the Comelec is “well advised to heed the snowballing call for the conduct of a manual count of the votes to be cast in the May 10 elections side-by-side with the automated tally of the ballots of 50 million registered voters.”
IT experts worried about fraud in the polls earlier prodded the poll body to consider the parallel manual count to guarantee the credibility of poll results.
De Venecia, the PMP spokesman on poll automation, has been advocating the double track counting of votes since in the last quarter of 2009 as soon as doubts surfaced about the dependability of various aspects of the automated election system (AES).
“We had noticed early on that the AES had several vulnerabilities, including the danger of the precinct count optical scan machines being infused with self-erasing malicious software, questions about the PCOS source codes which were never subjected to independent validation, and the secure transmission of election data,” De Venecia said.
“We in the PMP most definitely support the call of the Philippine National IT Standards Foundation for the votes for president, vice president and mayors be tallied manually given the estimate that it would only take about three hours for a precinct with 500 voters and five hours for a precinct with 1,000 voters to do parallel count,” De Venecia said.
“The projection that the Comelec would only need an extra P300 million for additional honorarium of the Board of Election Inspectors will be a relatively small price to pay to vouchsafe the integrity of the elections,” according to De Venecia.
He also scored the poll body, saying that “It is about time for the Comelec to give Filipino taxpayers all the details on the multi-billion peso contracts it has awarded and will still sign for the upcoming elections.”
He said that the poll body “should also now open its books for early scrutiny by the Commission on Audit since it claims to have completed nearly all the pre-election tasks from setting up the highly-expensive automated election system up to the printing of the official ballots and the delivery of election paraphernalia across out archipelago.”
De Vencia cited the estimate of the Namfrel that the Comelec has already spent at least P10 billion of the national election budget of P16.5 billion, consisting of P11.3 billion for poll automation plus P5.21 billion representing the regular allocation in the national budget every three years that an election is held.
De Venecia asked why the Comelec continues to hold off on revealing all the particulars on the supply contracts it has awarded for the elections, such as the identities of all the contractors. “The public will be comforted if the people know there are no other deals like the anomalous plastic ballot security folders contract which the Comelec backed off from.”
Comelec should also furnish the CoA the following election preparation contracts packaged and given green lights by the poll body:
1. P7.2 billion for the lease of 82,200 PCOS scan machines from Smartmatic’
2. P243 million for 77,000 ballot boxes awarded to Smartmatic without bidding;
3. P28 million for 80,000 units of handheld portable ultraviolet lamps;
Link: http://www.tribune.net.ph/
Insisting that a parallel and manual count at the precinct level would bring about credible elections, an elite group of businessmen, who are mostly identified with the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), yesterday called a press conference at the Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan City, putting additional pressure on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to allow a parallel count of the ballots in the precinct level.
The press conference was carried live on the Lopez cable network yesterday morning.
There were hints from some members of the group that, apart from coming up with an open letter to the Comelec, massive protest actions will be employed.
Earlier, there was staged in front of the Comelec, the so-called “Jericho” march, which harks back to the biblical Jericho walls that crumbled.
The business groups warned of massive protests to be staged but failed to state whether these would be staged before the polls, or after the polls.
The group, led by the Makati Business Club (MBC), wants a parallel manual count of the May 10 automated polls, stressing that the manual count will usher in credibility and acceptability of the May 10 election results.
The poll commissioners, as well as Malacañang, has taken the position that a parallel manual count at this stage of the poll preparations is well nigh impossible and “unnecessary.”
Fears of electoral fraud and machine failure were cited by the group as dangers in automation.
Agusto Lagman, an IT expert, pointed out that the trend today in Europe and the United States is to return to manual count, as automated counting machines have already been found to be unreliable, especially after the controversy over the George W. Bush-Al Gore Florida count by the automated polls.
MBC chairman Ramon del Rosario spoke of the open letter that he said has been signed, not just by the business groups, but also the presidential candidates.
“We support it (parallel manual count) since we know what automation entails and we know the dangers that can be found in automation,” Del Rosario said, adding that even in business practice, when corporations switch systems from manual to automation, such is done in stages and they do not drop the manual system while testing automation.
He deplored the move of the Comelec to go all out on nationwide automated polls.
Lagman, for his part, brought up the many problems and dangers of the automated system that makes use of the Precinct Count Optical Scan, as well as the fact that only Smartmatic holds the keys--or the passwords.
Lagman recalled that during the elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), in a place called Wao, one machine registered a zero vote and when this was reporred to the Comelec and Smartmatic, which also conducted the automated polls, it was Smartmatic in Manila that “fixed” up the results of that machine.
Lagman pointed to this as an example of how the results of the vote could be manipulated from a faraway site, as it is only Smartmatic that has control of all the keys.
Another danger, it was stressed, was the fact that even as the law states that Comelec would have to make available the source code of the machines, this was never done by the poll body.
A passionate Ernesto Ordonez, who represents an agricultrual group, and who has endorsed the open letter, said: “We do not want failure and we do not want cheating.”
The group also claimed that it would not take too long for the results of the elections if the count is done manually at the precinct level, and would only include three positions: the presidency, the vice presidency and the mayoralty.
The IT experts also joined in while expressing grave doubts over the the results of the automated elections, citing that both the Comelec and Smartmatic lack experience in conducting automated polls.
Roberto Verzola of Halalang Marangal raised the possibility of that many of the ballots printed by the National Printing Office may well be misread, or not read at all by the PCOS machines.
Verzola said the ballots may have been misprinted, considering the reported displacements of the ultraviolet security markings on the ballots.
Verzola said that the ovals as printed, may have been misaligned by few minute centimers which would then not be read by the machine.
Lagman warned of major glitches in the May elections saying that this is a first time for Smartmatic to implement the PCOS technology, stressing that it is only the Philippines that has jumped from fully manual to fully automated polls, which brings in more danger.
The Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino resident IT expert, Joey de Venecia, who is running for a Senate sear, yesterday said that the Comelec is “well advised to heed the snowballing call for the conduct of a manual count of the votes to be cast in the May 10 elections side-by-side with the automated tally of the ballots of 50 million registered voters.”
IT experts worried about fraud in the polls earlier prodded the poll body to consider the parallel manual count to guarantee the credibility of poll results.
De Venecia, the PMP spokesman on poll automation, has been advocating the double track counting of votes since in the last quarter of 2009 as soon as doubts surfaced about the dependability of various aspects of the automated election system (AES).
“We had noticed early on that the AES had several vulnerabilities, including the danger of the precinct count optical scan machines being infused with self-erasing malicious software, questions about the PCOS source codes which were never subjected to independent validation, and the secure transmission of election data,” De Venecia said.
“We in the PMP most definitely support the call of the Philippine National IT Standards Foundation for the votes for president, vice president and mayors be tallied manually given the estimate that it would only take about three hours for a precinct with 500 voters and five hours for a precinct with 1,000 voters to do parallel count,” De Venecia said.
“The projection that the Comelec would only need an extra P300 million for additional honorarium of the Board of Election Inspectors will be a relatively small price to pay to vouchsafe the integrity of the elections,” according to De Venecia.
He also scored the poll body, saying that “It is about time for the Comelec to give Filipino taxpayers all the details on the multi-billion peso contracts it has awarded and will still sign for the upcoming elections.”
He said that the poll body “should also now open its books for early scrutiny by the Commission on Audit since it claims to have completed nearly all the pre-election tasks from setting up the highly-expensive automated election system up to the printing of the official ballots and the delivery of election paraphernalia across out archipelago.”
De Vencia cited the estimate of the Namfrel that the Comelec has already spent at least P10 billion of the national election budget of P16.5 billion, consisting of P11.3 billion for poll automation plus P5.21 billion representing the regular allocation in the national budget every three years that an election is held.
De Venecia asked why the Comelec continues to hold off on revealing all the particulars on the supply contracts it has awarded for the elections, such as the identities of all the contractors. “The public will be comforted if the people know there are no other deals like the anomalous plastic ballot security folders contract which the Comelec backed off from.”
Comelec should also furnish the CoA the following election preparation contracts packaged and given green lights by the poll body:
1. P7.2 billion for the lease of 82,200 PCOS scan machines from Smartmatic’
2. P243 million for 77,000 ballot boxes awarded to Smartmatic without bidding;
3. P28 million for 80,000 units of handheld portable ultraviolet lamps;
4. P75.8 million for 720,000 bottles of indelible ink awarded to Texas Resources Corp.;
5. P499.1-million contract for trucking and delivery services for official ballots that has also been awarded to Smartmatic;
6. P519-million contract given to Smartmatic for the transport of ballot boxes with PCOS machines to polling centers;
7. P1.5 billion to Unison Joint Venture for the cleansing of computerized voters list;
8. P2.1 million to Copylandia Office System Corp. for nine units of copying machines;
9. P174.2 million to Noah’s Paper Mills for storage and working area logistics.
“This is just a partial listing, but Comelec should give the particulars on all the election-related contracts. Their prompt action will contribute significantly to building public confidence about how trustworthy it is in the handling of public money, in the same way that it vows that the elections will finally be fraud-free,” De Venecia said.
5. P499.1-million contract for trucking and delivery services for official ballots that has also been awarded to Smartmatic;
6. P519-million contract given to Smartmatic for the transport of ballot boxes with PCOS machines to polling centers;
7. P1.5 billion to Unison Joint Venture for the cleansing of computerized voters list;
8. P2.1 million to Copylandia Office System Corp. for nine units of copying machines;
9. P174.2 million to Noah’s Paper Mills for storage and working area logistics.
“This is just a partial listing, but Comelec should give the particulars on all the election-related contracts. Their prompt action will contribute significantly to building public confidence about how trustworthy it is in the handling of public money, in the same way that it vows that the elections will finally be fraud-free,” De Venecia said.
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