The Need to Manually Verify the 2010 Automated Elections

On Election Day 2010 we will want to know the answers to the following questions:

1. Did the PRECINCT COUNT OPTICAL SCAN machines count each ballot correctly and prepare accurate Election Returns for each precinct with the 99.995% accuracy required by the Automation Law and the Comelec-Smartmatic contract?

2. Did the PCOS Machines accurately transmit each Election Return to the seven destination canvassing servers?

In order to dispel any doubts in the mind of the public about the overall INTEGRITY of the Automated Election System, I believe it is critical for Comelec to accomplish a 100 percent Quality Assurance Test of all the PCOS machines actually used in the 2010 elections.

This it can do LIVE, On-the-Spot on Election Day 2010, using the Board of Election Inspectors to perform perhaps ONE LAST MANUAL COUNT that will also establish and verify the FIRST AUTOMATED COUNT.

Each Board of Election Inspectors at the Voting Precincts could and should perform a MANUAL VERIFICATION AUDIT of the Election Return produced by their Smartmatic PCOS machine -- by counting the machine's accepted valid ballots and comparing the results with the automatically tallied Election Return. Each BEI can and should also compare their manually determined and PCOS Election Return with the Transmitted ER for their precinct as found in Public Domain Servers that receive ERs from the PCOS machines.

There will be no better opportunity to capture this data on the performance accuracy of the PCOS machine after Election Day itself because only on that day do we have the BEI manpower in the form of those poor public school teachers indentured to Comelec for Election Day duties. They can now play an important and historic role in launching the new election system we are trying out in 2010.

I think it is CRITICAL to the long term CREDIBILITY, TRUSTWORTHINESS and ACCEPTABILITY of the automated election system to the general public that such a manual audit be done at least this first time around in 2010 if not in several election cycles yet to come in 2013, 2016 and beyond.

ONE LAST MANUAL COUNT TO LAUNCH AUTOMATION

The Commission on Elections should really be gearing up to conduct such a manual audit and capture this historic data--if only to establish a benchmark of performance for automated elections systems not only for the Philippines but for the world's growing number of functional democracies. It is the only way to prove if the system contracted for, did or did not, meet the 99.995 percent accuracy rating required of it in the law authorizing the Comelec to conduct such an automated election.

This would represent a TRANSPARENT PUBLIC TEST of the automation system as a whole, as implemented on Election Day 2010 -- its hardware, software, firmware and actual system performance. Not some subset or demonstrator system but the whole thing LIVE. Moreover, the poll watchers of various political parties and candidates, as well as citizen and mass media watch dogs can observe the manual audit process and "exercise vigilance" as they say.

The current plan of Comelec is, I believe, a partial random sampling audit involving just a small subset of the PCOS machines, since the Comelec without the BEIs is severely limited in manpower to undertake any serious manual count and comparison with digitally stored data. This PARTIAL AUDIT PLAN of Comelec is woefully inadequate for the purpose of establishing the 99.995% accuracy rating of the AES, and its overall integrity and reliability and would only leave the agency's automated system under a cloud of some doubt and vulnerable to all sorts of criticisms.

A transparent one hundred percent manual audit of the automated election results in May 2010 is the UNAVOIDABLE FIRST STEP towards establishing the automated election system itself.

Did SCoRP Not Buy the Massive Failure of Elections Scenario?

OPPONENTS of automating the 2010 national elections have been predicting a MASSIVE FAILURE OF ELECTIONS as a corrupt and incompetent Comelec and "foreign-controlled" Smartmatic are overwhelmed by dried out felt tip pens, yard-long ballots, malfunctioning PCOS machines, bogged-down telecomm facilities, and millions of disenfranchised voters."  

THE VERA FILES Half Truth Is Their Business Manaslatas laid out the possible scenarios: What if the two special felt-tip pens allotted per precinct dry up before voting ends and voters have nothing to write their choices with? What if the counting machine gets jammed when ballots are being fed to it? What if the local GPRS connection is bad and slows the transmission of the results from the precincts to the municipal or city canvassers? Or what if someone snatches the laptop computer at the canvassing center?

But has the Supreme Court bought this scenario? It would appear NOT as there is a noticeable change of tack in this week's salvo from PABLO MANALASTAS, (the I.T. expert of the Center for People Empowerment and Governance) which suggests that the Supreme Court Justices may not have been spooked or impressed enough by the above Failure of Elections Scenario.

So here comes the Automated Cheating Scenario  where a completely transformed Comelec and Smartmatic are about to pull off a Mission Impossible-style Heist of the 2010 Elections with precision and stealth to make Virgilio Garcillano proud:

But these scenarios aren’t as worrisome as what else could happen: The whole system could be rigged, and all computers—from those at the precincts all the way to those at the Commission on Elections and Congress that will canvass the results for the senatorial and presidential elections—could be pre-programmed to make certain candidates win.

How could this happen?

The Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines could arrive at the precincts with prepared ballot images and election results already inputted into the system, and the computers for canvassing with prepared Certificates of Canvass (COC) and Statements of Votes (SOVs). And at any stage of the elections, someone who has the root password could log into the system from a remote site and control the canvassing computers—and the canvassers wouldn’t even know. This could happen as early as municipal canvassing because the computer will stay connected to the network for 24 to 72 hours via modem starting at 6 p.m. of election day.

Meet the automated version of “Garci,” the infamous Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano whose manual operation of swapping genuine ERs, COCs and SOVs with the ones he and his “operators” prepared allegedly helped President Gloria Arroyo get her extra million votes in the 2004 elections. The whole operation was documented in leaked wiretapped phone conversations.

Well there you have it folks: exposed for all of us Blind Dummies by the I.T. Expert of CenPeg writing at The Vera Files. How could we have missed it? We are so stupid! "...someone who has the root password could log into the system from a remote site and control the canvassing computers—and the canvassers wouldn’t even know."

And yet this wouldn't work at all would it?  This brilliant scenario being peddled by The Vera Files and Pablo Manalastas CANNOT WORK as described since Comelec's canvassing computers do not control the canvassing computers of the Dominant Majority and Minority parties, the Accredited Citizen's Arm (Namfrel or KBP), the Kapisanan ng Mga Brodkasters (KBP)--to which the Election Returns from all 82,000 plus PCOS Machines can also be sent in parallel.  In a sense this is the central feature of the Smartmatic system design aimed at the heart of wholesale cheating during the Canvassing stages of the manual election system.  By essentially giving us the ability to distribute the Election Returns in digital form--compleat and unexpurgated--to the above entities the Canvassing Stages in effect become matters of PUBLIC COUNTING. 

This is also the exact opposite of what CenPeg, Harry Roque, Pablo Manalastas, et al have been claiming about the Smartmatic system design.  For the first time in Philippine electoral history, the Canvassing Stages (above the precinct level) are now the subject of PUBLIC COUNTING in the digital age.  For the first time in history, "poll watching" by the dominant parties and citizens watchdogs will be enabled with all of the data on 250,000 voting precincts.  Perhaps "someone with the root password" can log into and modify the Comelec computers.  But even a Brochure reader like me can tell you this is futile since such a person could not also break into the Other Canvassing Computers -- over at Namfrel, KBP and the dominant parties.

Automation and the Obsolescence of Trust

OPPOSITION to the automated election system being prepared by Comelec for 2010 comes from a surprising direction--not Garci, Bedol, the Palace, the trapos, nor even the political opposition--but from certain elements of Civil Society who simply do not TRUST the government and Comelec to come up with a secure and honest system. In this of course, Comelec itself has given them much justification, such as the last time they tried to automate in 2004 under Ben Abalos.

In a justifiably cynical sense of course they are right: Comelec can't be trusted. But I think these elements also miss the essential point: that a successfully implemented automation system will largely obsolete the need to trust Comelec in the old-fashioned sense of the word, much as we do not have to "trust" our banks in that way. However getting to that point may not be so easy, since it is Comelec itself that must implement automation! It looks at first like a classic Chicken-or-the-Egg situation. But it is NOT because in fact it is the Congress which is mandating the Comelec to modernize a hopelessly defraudable manual election system. Even though Comelec is an independent Constitutional Commission, it is actually the Congress that is empowered by the Constitution to provide for a system to secure the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot and uphold the the Right of Suffrage. So I believe the most utilitarian way of looking at this situation is that we, the People, through our elected representatives, are in fact forcing reform upon the Comelec by making it adopt an automated system that will disempower the Garcis, Bedols and Abaloses within that all important institution!

In the meantime, however I believe the chances are much greater than 50/50 that the Supreme Court will TRO a Monkey Wrench into the 2010 automation project. What the Civil Society opponents of automation want before allowing automation is a trustworthy Comelec. And because Comelec may have done some things wrong even this time around they have unwittingly done the Dirty Work for those who really don't want automation anyway: the Palace, the trapos and those who know how to cheat the old fashioned way. If this happens, and SCoRP rules against automation, Garci will probably christen his new yacht next year as the M/V Harry Roque.

COMELEC COMMISSIONER RENE SARMIENTO writes a defense of the worthy ambition to automate Philippine elections in 2010: A Moment in History: Understanding Poll Automation for the 2010 Elections (Business Mirror). He rises to Biblical eloquence in his concluding paragraph:

Hebrew soldiers said Goliath was too big they could not kill him. David said Goliath was too big, his slingshot would not miss him. Attitude. Equipped with the correct attitude, our people can view this electoral breakthrough called poll automation, and the generous support of many all over the land, young and elderly alike, as reasons for hope and optimism. With prayer and work (ora et labora) that there are better days ahead, Filipinos will succeed. If we whine, we complain, we bemoan that the Filipinos are beyond redemption, we will fail. Against gloom and doom, we labor and hope that change is within reach, and proclaim that God provides and He will never fail the Philippines!

Many voters, in particular the youth and new registrants, are looking forward to the automated polls and I believe would be unlikely to vote at all under the old, fraudulent, cumbersome and messy manual election system.

Ominously, the Supreme Court of the Republic of the Philippnes (SCoRP) heard oral arguments last July 29 on a taxpayers suit filed by UP Law Professor Harry Roque that would effectively stop the Comelec's plan to conduct the first nationwide automated election in May 2010.

ABSCBN reports on Justice Carpio's question about "foreign control" of the elections during last week's oral arguments in Roque v. Comelec in what could be another case like ITF v. Comelec (2004):

Justice Antonio Carpio raised the issue of foreign control of the polls after he pointed out the mandate of the Comelec, which is to supervise and administer the election process. Carpio noted that the winning foreign bidder, Barbados-Venezuela Netherlands-based Smartmatic, will have exclusive possession of the public and private keys for the operation of the electronic machines.

Carpio, one of the few IT-knowledgeable magistrates in the tribunal, explained that the public key allows access to the main system (or administrator) while the private key is essentially the password for the operation of the individual machines. The precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that will be used in the polls will count, consolidate and transmit the election results.

In response to Carpio's line of questioning, Lead Petitioner Harry Roque reportedly posited that if Comelec grants exclusive possession to Smartmatic, it also cedes exclusive control of the election process:

Lead petitioner UP Professor Harry Roque told the High Court that it will be Smartmatic which will have control of both public and private keys. During the elections, the private key will be given to the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) in the precincts.

However, the BEIs will have to depend on the private keys (or passwords) to be given by Smartmatic. By having control of both public and private keys, the set-up, in essence, reposes to Smartmatic the exclusive control of the election process.

Roque said the scheme amounts to “complete abdication of the function of Comelec” to supervise the polls, which is unconstitutional.

CAVEAT:

I think this an unjustifiable and rather naive assertion. It is like claiming that because I insist upon my bank having exclusive possession of the combination to their safe, I have completely abdicated my control over what the bank does with my money. Conversely, they seem to suggest that there ought not to be exclusive possession of these all important keys by Smartmatic. What? Maybe they would like to give Cyber Garci a copy of them?

Moreover, there appears to be developing here a Y2K-bug-like superstition about CRYPTOGRAPHY based on ignorance of its true essential and central role in securing the elections and disguised by the use of technical verbiage. Where the IBM PC clocks were made an object of mysterious power to foment disaster, Roque et al have tried mighty hard to invest the same mystical malevolence in the cryptographic keys used in an automated system like this.

To foster great public understanding of this all-important SECURITY feature of the automation systems, we must look for documentation and information about this aspect of the automation project from independent and reliable sources. Fortunately, the winning bidder of Comelec's automation contract, Smartmatic Corp. has participated in a number of United States elections and in the process has been forced to adopt U.S. Federal and State standards, guidelines and qualification procedures for its systems and products in order to compete in that very tough market.

Before suddenly rendering any historic decisions, I think it would be most helpful and beneficial if everyone involved, even "I.T.-knowledgeable" Justices of the Supreme Court, would become familiar with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's General Security Requirements for Voting Systems, which covers the following topics:

Cryptography: Requirements relating to use of cryptography in voting systems, e.g., use of U.S. Government FIPS standards.

Setup Inspection: Requirements that support the inspection of a voting device to determine that: (a) software installed on the voting device can be identified and verified; (b) the contents of the voting device’s registers and variables can be determined; and (c) components of the voting device (such as touch screens, batteries, power supplies, etc.) are within proper tolerances, functioning properly, and ready for use.

Software Installation: Requirements that support the authentication and integrity of voting system software using digital signatures provided by test labs, National Software Reference Library (NSRL), and notary repositories.

Access Control: Requirements that address voting system capabilities to limit and detect access to critical voting system components in order to guard against loss of system and data integrity, availability, confidentiality, and accountability in voting systems.

System Integrity Management: Requirements that address operating system security, secure boot loading, system hardening, etc.

Communications Security: Requirements that address both the integrity of transmitted information and protect the voting system from communications based threats.

System Event Logging: Requirements that assist in voting device troubleshooting, recording a history of voting device activity, and detecting unauthorized or malicious activity.

Physical Security: Requirements that address the physical aspects of voting system security: locks, tamper-evident seals, etc.

What one discovers from a careful study of this comprehensive document is that CRYPTOGRAPHY is essential and necessary to all these aspects of system security and operation. It would be literally impossible to carry out its mission and guarantee that system security if Smartmatic were not given exclusive possession of them.

The cryptographic public and private keys referred to are a necessary and indispensable piece of information without which the Automated Election System could not be operated properly, nor could the system provider then guarantee the integrity, authenticity, verifiability or even the source of election data generated by the 82,500 PCOS machines. Thus, the unavoidable FACT is that Smartmatic must have possession of these keys. Does this constitute "foreign control" of the polls? The short answer is NO, simply because legally speaking, Smartmatic/TIM is 60% Filipino! The long answer is also NO, since it would be dumb-ass foolish NOT to insist on exclusive possession and indeed absolute secrecy and confidentiality of the private keys to the PCOS machines and of all other machines in the AES. I cannot see how any "I.T.-knowledgeable person"--whether or not they happen to also sit on the high bench of SCoRP--could possibly think that sharing the private keys with Comelec for example could possibly be a wise or sane thing to do!

The EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION by Smartmatic is certainly not "foreign control of the polls" but a necessary security feature of the whole automation system! It seems to me that we ought to view exclusive possession by Smartmatic of the public and private keys as a virtue and strength, not a vulnerability or undesirable feature at all! We surely do not want non-exclusive possession, such as by allowing Comelec to know these codes! Comelec has no need of these codes that I can see. But if it grants exclusive possession to Smartmatic, does it also cede exclusive control of the election process as effusively asserted by Petitioner Harry Roque, in response to Justice Carpio's lines of questioning?

In order to understand WHO should control the CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS that are used to secure the individual ballot data, the election returns and the entire process of digitally canvassing the results of the elections, we must first understand what these keys are and how they are used. I do not wish to controvert the claim that Justice Carpio is "IT-knowledgeable" but if his position was accurately reported above, that knowledge does not show in any suggestion that he agrees with Roque's conclusion. First of all, the referred to "public keys" and "private keys" are indeed essential not only to the operation of the Smartmatic Automated Election system (both its hardware and software) but also to the overall SECURITY of the data streams exchanged between Persons and among the various Machines involved. As such, it is both right and proper that Smartmatic have control of these cryptographic reference materials, for otherwise they could not conduct the election! However, it is purely hyperbolic for Petitioner to assert that this amounts to Comelec abdicating its Constitutional duty. Control of the cryptography is central to the system's data integrity and security.

This happened already once before --in the 2004 SCoRP decision ITF v. Comelec--whose incomplete restitution has left a sour taste in everyone's mouths about Comelec and automation. The Court-ordered recovery of over a billion pesos paid to provider Megapacific in that case has never happened! As a result of the 2004 fiasco over Ben Abalos' Automatic Counting Machines there has developed a justifiable cynicism and distrust of Comelec. Many people are simply unwilling to grant Comelec the benefit of a second doubt in the case of the proposed Smartmatic Automated Election System and Comelec has not done much to win the Public's TRUST since the Garci Scandal of 2004, indeed, insult was added to injury with that slow-motion Maguindanao scandal in 2007 involving the votes of Migz Zubiri and Koko Pimentel, and Mr. Garci Junior himself, the accurately-named Lintang Bedol!

Of course, ANY first attempt to conduct an automated national election involving up to 50 million voters has got to be fraught with pitfalls and challenges. However, I do not agree with Petitioners in the case aforementioned that there is a big risk of an outright failure of election because of a massive and systemic failure in the Smartmatic system software and hardware. Against such a possibility -- say their PCOS disappears and another cannot be delivered in time -- each Board of Election Inspectors is expected to conduct a manual count of the executed ballots and to process their Election Return in the normal way: by submitting it to the Municipal Board of Canvass. They are obligated to do the same any way under RA 9369 except that they could also forward the PCOS-generated E.R. In a sense, manual election operations become the fail-over mechanism should the PCOS machines be unable to do the job on the voters' ballots. The Smartmatic Real Time Information System (REIS) claims to be able to accomodate manually counted and reported Election Returns from precincts without functional PCOS machines.

Some paint a picture of possible widespread inability to operate the Smartmatic PCOS machines; or that these machines will spit out and transmit inaccurate or dishonest election returns that cannot be questioned and corrected. Such an eventuality would be a grave disappointment, of course.

It is easy to believe the speculation that the First Gentleman Mike Arroyo stands to make a hefty commission from the deal, and not much less credulity to think that the FG or similar evildoers may even resort to "wholesale automated cheating".

I guess, I am prepared to believe that certain persons in High Places stand to make money from a seven billion peso contract, but I do not personally believe that Smartmatic Corp. is primarily interested in selling out to some Filipino politician instead of trying to establish itself as a long term leader in a rapidly growing global market for automated election systems. The calculus here is pure greed, since Smartmatic stands to make more money providing secure, reliable election systems than colluding with Filipino cheaters for a small time score.

Accusations have been made that these cryptographic codes in the possession of "foreign companies" will be used to conduct "modernized cheating" or digital dagdag bawas during the transmission and canvassing phase. The main accusation of petitioners is in fact "Comelec has abdicated its Constitutional duty " to conduct the 2010 synchronized national and local elections if it agrees to give Smartmatic Corp. "exclusive possession of the public and private keys" used in the elections.

I believe this characterization to be HYPERBOLIC, if not hysterical. It is equivalent to claiming that one ought not to allow one's Bank to exclusively possess the combination to its own SAFE because then it might cheat one of one's money, or not yield to an audit of the balance on demand.

Exclusive possession of those cryptographic keys by Smartmatic is WISE, as opposed to shared possession with say Virgilio Garcillano and others at Comelec--which strikes me as a singularly idiotic idea.

Automation and the Rights of Suffrage

"THE CONGRESS SHALL PROVIDE A SYSTEM FOR SECURING THE SECRECY AND THE SANCTITY OF THE BALLOT..."

What exactly does the Constitution mean by the two terms: (1) "the secrecy of the ballot" and (2) "the sanctity of the ballot"--and how should our appreciation of them change if the country moves from the old Manual Election System to some kind of new Automated Election System? How for example can a ballot remain SECRET yet be properly and verifiably COUNTED by a public agency like the Boards of Election Inspectors, Comelec and the Congress? How can BOTH secrecy and sanctity of the ballot be secured, as required by the Constitution? In future there may not even BE a physical ballot involved in the voting process!

The 1987 Constitution provides:

ARTICLE V -- SUFFRAGE
Section 1. Suffrage may be exercised by all citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are at least eighteen years of age, and who shall have resided in the Philippines for at least one year, and in the place wherein they propose to vote, for at least six months immediately preceding the election. No literacy, property, or other substantive requirement shall be imposed on the exercise of suffrage.

Section 2. The Congress shall provide a system for securing the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot as well as a system for absentee voting by qualified Filipinos abroad.
The Congress shall also design a procedure for the disabled and the illiterates to vote without the assistance of other persons. Until then, they shall be allowed to vote under existing laws and such rules as the Commission on Elections may promulgate to protect the secrecy of the ballot.

"THE CONGRESS SHALL PROVIDE A SYSTEM FOR SECURING THE SECRECY AND THE SANCTITY OF THE BALLOT..."

What exactly does the Constitution mean by the two terms: (1) "the secrecy of the ballot" and (2) "the sanctity of the ballot"--and how should our appreciation of them change if the country moves from the old Manual Election System to some kind of new Automated Election System? How for example can a ballot remain SECRET yet be properly and verifiably COUNTED by a public agency like the Boards of Election Inspectors, Comelec  and the Congress?   How can BOTH secrecy and sanctity of the ballot be secured, as required by the Constitution?  In future there may not even BE a physical ballot involved in the voting process!

I think that these two terms refer to two different aspects of the INFORMATION that is contained in a valid voting BALLOT namely: (1) Which VOTER cast the ballot; and (2) Which CANDIDATES were chosen on the ballot.

The SECRECY of the ballot refers to the IDENTITY of the VOTER who cast a given ballot. There must be a reasonable expectation that this information cannot easily or readily be determined from an inspection of the ballot alone.

Meanwhile, the SANCTITY of the ballot means that it ought to be properly counted and canvassed and the candidates chosen receive the intended vote.

Under the Manual Election System that has been used in all past elections, a paper ballot must be filled out by the Voter with the NAMES of the candidates (this, despite the explicit 1987 provision that literacy is not a requirement for the exercise of suffrage.) The ballots cast at a given precinct are then read (usually by persons many of the voters will know to have been their school teachers) and a tally of all the votes is made to produce the Precinct Election Return.  Theoretically, the identity of the voter casting a given ballot is kept "secret"  since the voter does not literally sign the ballot.  But in most cases of course, this is a legal and practical fiction.    About 250,000 precincts (max 200 registered voters each) are required to service about 50 million potential voters for 2010.

In the case of the Manual Election System that has been in place since time immemorialthere is of course no identification of the voter on the ballot. However, since each voter is obligated to write out the names of each candidate, and the local school teachers who know everyone from infancy (and likely their handwritten script) are manning the Board of Election Inspectors, the concept of voter identity secrecy could easily be a legal fiction in most cases!

On the other hand, the sanctity of the ballot under the Manual Election System is notoriously subject to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and every imaginative genre of dagdag-bawas known to Garci, Bedol and that shady ilk of election operators during a month long process of municipal, provincial and national canvass.

Comes now the concept of the AUTOMATED ELECTION. How are reasonable Filipinos to construe the concepts of SECRECY and SANCTITY of the BALLOT under this new SYSTEM?

In the upcoming May, 2010 elections, an automated election system will enable registered voters to MARK selections from a LIST of candidates on the printed paper ballot. The ballot is fed into a Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) which photographs it; programmatically interprets the voter's choices; encrypts, registers and stores the raw data in preparation for CANVAS, TRANSMISSION, and ARCHIVING. The PCOS will also produce a RECEIPT for the voter's records.

The following analogy is useful: the ballot is like a set of email messages, one for each candidate selected by the voter. The voter is the sender of the email messages and the candidates chosen are the recipients of the message.

Thus the "delivery system" which is to be provided by the Congress and executed by Comelec must efficiently and accurately deliver all possible 50 million email message ballots in 2010 to their intended recipient's "mailboxes" maintained for local candidates at the Comelec HQ and the Congress in joint session assembled for the national canvass. At the same time, for any given message, the identity of the sender must not be easily or readily determinable from the ballot alone.

May I suggest that there is a well-established technology which can fulfill the Constitutional guarantees on secrecy and sanctity of the democratic ballot that is available to a suitably engineered and implemented automated election system. I speak of techniques involving the use of PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY to guard both the voter-sender's identity from public view, and ensure that only the intended candidate-recipients can actually receive the ballot-message!

Are such systems even possible in the real, practical world?  You bet! In fact take a look at this news item on PhysOrg from the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science, which describes a recently implemented "auditable voting system" called Helios that is a kind of ideal model for an automated election system:

 "Helios allows any participant to verify that their ballot was correctly captured, and any observer to verify that all captured ballots were correctly tallied," said Adida. "We call this open-audit voting because the complete auditing process is now available to any observer. This revolutionary approach to elections has been described in the literature for more than 25 years, yet this is the first real-world open-audit election of this magnitude and impact of outcome."

The verifiable voting system, available as open-source/free software, implements advanced cryptographic techniques to maintain ballot secrecy while providing a mathematical proof that the election tally was correctly computed.

Helios relies upon public key homomorphic encryption, a method where a public key is used to encrypt a message (in this case, a vote); messages can be combined under the covers of encryption (in this case, tallying the votes); and multiple independent private keys are required to decrypt the message (in this case, the election tally).

In an election, Helios works as follows:

• first, each voter receives a tracking number for his/her vote and the vote is encrypted with the election public key before it leaves the voter's browser;

• second, with the tracking number, a voter can then verify that their ballot was correctly captured by the voting system, which publishes a list of all tracking numbers prior to tallying; and

• finally, the voter, or any observer including election watchers from outside the election, can verify that these tracking numbers (the encrypted votes) were tallied appropriately. The election results contain a mathematical proof of the tally that cannot be "faked" even with the use of powerful computers.

"Because the tallying happens under the covers of encryption, the entire verification process is done without revealing the contents of each individual vote," explained Adida "Moreover, by using Helios, voters no longer need to blindly trust those supervising the election, as officials must provide mathematical proofs that everything was done appropriately."

The automated election system that Comelec will use in the May 2010 elections makes many similar claims of capability to secure ballot secrecy and sanctity, although the implementation is necessarily different for an election with 50 million voters spread out over 250,000 precincts, than what may be possible at Harvard University!  However, it will be noted that public key encryption techniques are at the heart of the SmartMatic/TIM consortium's proferred system and thus certainly has the potential to be evolved and developed into a mathematically secure voting system.

Cryptography is indeed the KEY to securing the rights of suffrage: ballot secrecy and sanctity! 

The Contract between Comelec and the technology provider, SmartMatic/TIM is to be found here on the Comelec website.

Key Dates on the Comelec 2010 Election Calendar are here.

SmartMatic Corp's Home Page contains a wealth of information about the company that will provide the historic first automated election system for the Philippines.  There is a Philippines Media Kit on the site.  Although SmartMatic has a track record in conducting elections, it reveals on the website that it has actually counted only about 150 million votes in all the elections it has automated.   The May 2010 elections could involve as many as 50 million Filipino voters.  

A successful automated election in the Philippines is clearly in the long-term interest of the company called SmartMatic, for it could unlock a rich market for automated election services in democracies all over the world.   A bad election in which the automated system is implicated in fraud or God forbid, a failure of election, is NOT in SmartMatic's interest.

I believe this is a key consideration in how pundits and bloggers especially ought to see SmartMatic.  Comelec of course is another matter!

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REFERENCE LINKS:

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

Harry Roque Hands GMA & SCoRP a Useful Justiciable Controversy

You know how the ConAss people like Luis Villafuerte and Prospero Nograles are desperately trying to create a "justiciable controversy" in the Supreme Court that can be used for the dastardly end of perpetuating their Mistress in power?  They should take lessons from Lawyer Harry Roque!

I am glad that Comelec has just signed a contract with Smartmatic/TIM to automate the 2010 elections. Warts and all, I think that this is a necessary and historic first step towards a whole new deal when it comes to democratic elections in the Philippines, which are a big fat joke on the electorates.  But the chances of automated elections being cancelled in 2010 is apparently so high in the opinion of the principals that the  winning bidder reportedly insisted on a contract provision, agreed to by Comelec, that the vendor would be paid for its systems and services even if automation is called off.  

Many observers are convinced that the TRAPOS (traditional politicians) and manual election cheating operators,  desperately want to, and can still scuttle election automation and force the usual manual election in 2010, so we are a long, long way off from a hoped for clean, honest and automated election that does not require over a month for the results to be announced while they are cooked.

Strangely enough, the prospect of killing automation is being bolstered most strongly by the most unlikely people. Consider for example the suit by lawyer and UP Law School Prof. HARRY ROQUE to stop the deal, filed in the Supreme Court (SCoRP) just 24 hours before the contract signing.   Although no TRO was issued to stop the signing, SCoRP can now sit on and possibly pull out this very lawsuit and simply kill off the automation deal between now and the 2010 elections.  We should not forget the Decision in 2004 which stopped Ben Abalos' Automatic Counting Machines project, ITF v. Comelec--which could just as easily happen again as "Roque v. Comelec."

Harry Roque has effectively handed the Palace a Magic Bullet with which to stop automated elections in 2010 dead in its tracks.  Please note that it was very important that this suit was filed not by the likes of Oliver "Lolo" Lozano or other known Palace toady,  but by someone just like Harry Roque, an ardent Administration critic.  As it is a plea for certiorari and prohibition,  SCoRP assumes original jurisdiction, can issue a TRO at any time and for virtually any reason (such as to hear oral arguments or testimonies of experts and amici curiae)--all of which could seriously, if not fatally  compromise the implementation. SCoRP could even conceivably micromanage the implementation, allowing for example partial implementation, thus allowing manual election fraud to occur in the usual places, like ARMM and Mindanao.   The salient point of course is that the Court can decide to do nothing until it decides to do something--thanks to Harry Roque!   

Just WHEN the Court does something is almost as important as the nature of its very rulings. Thus, what Harry Roque might have thought of as his duty as a lawyer to do -- to question the validity of a Public Contract affecting elections themselves -- turns out to be a double-edged sword that the powers-that-be which he so ardently disdains and opposes.  They are only too glad to accept such a weapon from him and wield it with a swift and merciless granting of  Harry Roque's prayer that election automation not be implemented in 2010.

This news can only be cheered on by the likes of Virgilio Garcillano, Lintang Bedol and their coterie of manual election fixers--as well as aforementioned traditional politicos--who can all plan the usual Dirty Tricks of Dagdag Bawas  Their black hearts can only be gladdened to see that those doing the Dirty Work for them against automated elections are not exactly Palace stooges or Congress toadies, but bona fide divas and doyens of Civil Society--the dahlinks of Main and Blog Stream Media, the creme de la creme of the intellectual Opposition!

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

The Last Time Comelec Tried Automation...and the Next

At the IBLOG5 Bloggers Conference held at Malcolm Theatre of the U.P. College of Law last month, I was seated beside the Comelec's Spokesman, James Jimenez who has been a blogger for many years and is the sort of government official who takes public abuse with apparent good humour and equanimity. I suppose that is a necessary qualification to work at Comelec!

At the time, there were still three live bidders under consideration by Comelec to automate the 2010 elections (AMA, Israeli firm Gilat, and Smartmatic). But there was also a lot of talk that there would be a failure of the bidding process and 2010 would have to be conducted manually. But James gave an upbeat presentation of the Comelec's automation plans and confidently predicted there would be a clear winner whose system would be acceptable "even to people like you"--whereupon he cast a friendly but chiding elbow and evil eye at me. Sitting on the front row of IBlog5, James Jimenez reminded me about the last time that Comelec tried to automate the elections. That was under Ben Abalos in 2003 with his ill-fated MegaPacific Automated Counting Machines and the billion peso bidding fiasco that was so severely dealt with by the Supreme Court in its en banc decision, penned by Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban: Information Technology Foundation v. Comelec [G.R. No. 159139. January 13, 2004]

My favorite passage of this SCoRP decision striking down Ben Abalos' scandal tainted automation project of 2003 is the following paragraph that happens to contain Footnote 54:

J. Panganiban: But there is still another gut-level reason why the approach taken by Comelec is reprehensible. It rides on the perilous assumption that nothing would go wrong; and that, come election day, the Commission and the supplier would have developed, adjusted and “re-programmed” the software to the point where the automated system could function as envisioned. But what if such optimistic projection does not materialize? What if, despite all their herculean efforts, the software now being hurriedly developed and tested for the automated system performs dismally and inaccurately or, worse, is hacked and/or manipulated?[54] What then will we do with all the machines and defective software already paid for in the amount of P849 million of our tax money? Even more important, what will happen to our country in case of failure of the automation?

And here indeed is Footnote 54 of the above SCoRP decision:

[54] In the December 15, 2003 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is an item titled “Digital ‘dagdag-bawas’: a nonpartisan issue” by Dean Jorge Bocobo, from which the following passages appear:

“The Commission on Elections will use automated counting machines to tally paper ballots in the May elections, and a telecommunications network to transmit the results to headquarters, along with CDs of the data. Yet, with only five months to go, the application software packages for that crucial democratic exercise--several hundred thousand lines of obscure and opaque code--has not yet even been delivered in its final form, Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos admitted last week.

“My jaw dropped in amazement. Having built software for General Electric Co.'s medical systems business and military aircraft engines division (in another lifetime), I have learned the hard and painful way that 90 percent of unintended fatal problems with complex software lies in the last 10 percent of the code produced. From experience, I can assure you now with metaphysical certainty that not even the people furiously writing that software know whether it will actually work as intended on May 10, much less guarantee it. Simply put, the proposed software-hardware combination has neither been tested completely nor verified to comply with specifications.”

It's flattering to be quoted by SCoRP in an historic decision, but I feel absolutely no regrets whatsoever that Abalos' Automated Counting Machines were TKO'd by the Supreme Court in 2004, nor any remorse that I had played some very small role in stopping it. But, of course, after the 2004 national elections, I did wonder if the Supreme Court had not in fact been led by the nose to scuttle a system that the likes of Virgilio Garcillano, Bedang Bedol and their ilk probably did not want in place at that point in history. I doubt that we shall ever know...But fast forward to the present and James Jimenez's prediction or promise that 2010 would be an automated election.

I was skeptical at the time, sitting there with him at IBlog5, but now, lo and behold, the Poll Automation Law shepherded through Congress by Sen. Dick Gordon has apparently resulted in Comelec selecting a system and service provider to undertake the historic first-ever automated Philippine national elections in 2010. In its Notice of Award to the winning consortium bidder, Total Information Management Corp. plus Smartmatic, Inc., the Commission said:

You are hereby notified that pursuant to En Banc Resolution No. 8608 dated June 09, 2009, the Commission AWARDS to your joint venture the contract for the procurement of counting machines, including the supply of ballot paper, electronic transmission services using public telecommunications networks, training, technical support, warehousing, deployment, installation, pull-out, systems integration and overall project management, for the Automation of the Counting, Transmission and Canvassing of Votes for the May 10, 2010 Synchronized National and Local Elections, particularly:

...Particularly 7,191,484,739.47 pesos worth of goods and services.

Something James told me at IBlog5, which really stuck to my mind, was a conceptual distinction he made to me about automated systems being TAMPER-PROOF or being TAMPER-EVIDENT.

Speaking to ABSCBN News this past week, Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez mentions the fact that the Smartmatic system of 82,000 plus counting machines will be transmitting RAW PRECINCT DATA to a Comelec Database that could theoretically provide a strong measure of transparency would go a long way to securing the election. The idea here is that the "addends" that will eventually be canvassed and summed up for final vote tallies will be open to the public.

But the details of this open public database are unknown:

(1) Will it be online such that an outfit like Namfrel or a Bloggers Consortium, or some large nonpartisan citizen's group, could indeed organize an independent canvass using the exact same data as the Comelec and Congress--at least for the President, Vice President and Senators?

(2) Will it have the bandwidth ("big iron") to service the likely flood of public queries and organized efforts at auditing the results? Or will the thing bog down on Election Day and the Comelec will sheepishly apologize because they put some poopy laptop in to service the gigabit per second incoming query data?

(3) What would happen in the case of massive discrepancies? Can an independent group get special Comelec certification to help specify and build this major aspect of transparency? There are after all still 4 billion pesos left in the automation budget!

People who are interested in this aspect of the 2010 Automation Election need to get organized around the effort RIGHT NOW! The election is less than a year away.

Was 2004 Election Automation Junked Deliberately?

BACKGROUND: Elections in the Philippines are still registered, counted and canvassed MANUALLY, under the supervision of an Independent Constitutional Commission on Elections, the Comelec. To remedy this glaring deficiency in the conduct of democratic elections, the Philippine Congress passed Republic Act 8436 (The Election Modernization Act) in December 1997, mandating that the COMELEC conduct automated elections starting in the May, 1998 elections. History shows that did not happen. Instead an ill-fated attempt to use automation just in the ARMM area in Mindanao only gave automation a bad name when certain people poured cold water on some of the counting machines being tested and PROVED they couldn't stand such treatment. Nevertheless, by December, 2003 Comelec had purchased and was implementing a new multibillion peso Automated Counting and Data Transmission system to partially automate the 2004 vote-counting and canvassing process.

SUDDEN JUNKING OF THE AUTOMATION SYSTEM: In a stunning development, on January 13, 2004, right on the eve of the 2004 election campaign season and just months ahead of the May national elections. CHIEF JUSTICE ARTEMIO PANGANIBAN penned a Supreme Court decision which effectively prevented the use of that automated system. In the Decision Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines, et al. Vs. Commission on Elections, et al, (here at the Supreme Court website) Panganiban declares --

Because of the foregoing violations of law and the glaring grave abuse of discretion committed by Comelec, the Court has no choice but to exercise its solemn “constitutional duty”[3] to void the assailed Resolution and the subject Contract. The illegal, imprudent and hasty actions of the Commission have not only desecrated legal and jurisprudential norms, but have also cast serious doubts upon the poll body’s ability and capacity to conduct automated elections. Truly, the pith and soul of democracy -- credible, orderly, and peaceful elections -- has been put in jeopardy by the illegal and gravely abusive acts of Comelec.

What exactly were these violations and glaring grave abuses that caused the Court, literally on the eve of the 2004 elections to block the use of a system that would surely have thrown a monkey wrench in the operations of one Virgilio O. Garcillano? Panganiban enumerates them:

(1) They failed to achieve the accuracy rating criteria of 99.9995 percent set-up by the Comelec itself;

(2) They were not able to detect previously downloaded results at various canvassing or consolidation levels and to prevent these from being inputted again;

(3) They were unable to print the statutorily required audit trails of the count/canvass at different levels without any loss of data

The 2nd anniversary of this decision to JUNK the Comelec's Automated Counting System, was just a few days ago. Although the legal reasoning for declaring the Comelec Contract NULL AND VOID ab initio was sound, it seems all too DIABOLICAL today in HINDSIGHT, if one is already persuaded that Virgilio Garcillano conducted a massive VOTE-RIGGING operation in the subsequent national elections of 2004, which SUDDENLY had to be conducted MANUALLY.
It bears looking at again in the light of developments related to accusations of massive voterigging.

Even the PLAINTIFFS in the above case, who WON the case, are puzzled why nothing more happened after the Supreme Court issued its ruling. Here is EMAIL from Leah Navaro about the BlackNWhite Movement's public forum next Wednesday on this REALLY HOT ISSUE:

Is Impeachment the Only Way to Remove the Comelec Commissioners?

A Truth Forum on ELECTORAL REFORM sponsored by

The Black & White Movement

Date: Wednesday, 18 January 2006

Time: 1:00 P.M. (Late Lunch)

Venue: Metro Club, Estrella Street, Makati (across Rockwell)

On January 13, 2004, the Supreme Court released its decision nullifying the contract signed by the COMELEC with Mega Pacific eSolutions, Inc., directing the Office of the Solicitor-General to exert all efforts to recover the money and the Ombudsman to "determine the criminal liability, if any, of the public officials (and conspiring private individuals, if any)" involved in the subject contract.

The Supreme Court decision is now two years old, yet nothing much has happened. The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee has released Report No. 44 which recommends the resignation of the commissioners. The report further suggests that should the commissioners not resign, they can nonetheless be charged criminally by the Ombudsman.

Time is running out. If we want clean and credible elections and ultimately automate the process, then the COMELEC commissioners must resign. For as long as the present Commissioners remain, there is no hope for credible elections.

The Ombudsman must release their report and must elevate the case to the Sandiganbayan. NOW!

Listen to the original petitioners who brought the case to the Supreme Court and to special guests as they expound on the culpability of the commissioners and the options available to us.

Forum Panel:

¨ Senator Jovito Salonga, Chair, Kilosbayan

¨ Dr. Clarita Carlos, Professor, UP Political Science

¨ Atty. Harry Roque, UP Law Center

¨ The Original Petitioners:Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines; Maricor Akol; Augusto Lagman; Miguel Uy; Manuel Alcuaz; Rex Drilon II; Miguel Hilado; Ley Salcedo; Edu Lopez

RSVP: The Black & White Movement, Tel/Fax: (632) 426-6064, (632) 927-6349, (632) 426-5938

INTRIGUING THEORY: The intriguing possibility exists that the junking of the automated counting system was DELIBERATE, for the simple reason that not even the amazing election-season operator, Virgilio Garcillano, can break public key encryption and the nearly instantaneous transmission of results that would have been possible with an automated counting and data transmission system.

By the way, a column I wrote for the Philippine Daily Inquirer is quoted at length in the above Supreme Court Decision of Artemio Panganiban in Footnote [54]. --

In the December 15, 2003 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is an item titled “Digital ‘dagdag-bawas’: a nonpartisan issue” by Dean Jorge Bocobo, from which the following passages appear:

“The Commission on Elections will use automated counting machines to tally paper ballots in the May elections, and a telecommunications network to transmit the results to headquarters, along with CDs of the data. Yet, with only five months to go, the application software packages for that crucial democratic exercise--several hundred thousand lines of obscure and opaque code--has not yet even been delivered in its final form, Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos admitted last week.

FLATTERED, FOOLED AND PUT TO BED: At first I was very flattered to have a simple newspaper essay be quoted in an actual Supreme Court case, and on a technical point about software development at that! Remember, this was in January, 2004, and the elections were still four months, and the Hello Garci controversy more than a year and a half, in the future. So I chalked it all up to a satisfying public opinion campaign to junk a system that MIGHT be used for massive voterigging. How wrong I was! In retrospect, I think SOMEONE used the suit filed by ITF and Namfrel's Gus Lagman, et al, (including smart aleck pundits like me) to KILL the automation system and clear the field for GARCI. Today we scratch our heads because those whom the Court said were guilty of corruption in January 2004, still got to run the elections in May 2004, and will probably run the darn PLEBISCITE for the coming Glorious Constitution. Yes! Impeach the Comelec Commissioners. But I think Democracy's real enemies are higher up the food chain.

YES! By all means impeach the corrupt COMELEC officials for the 2004 Election Automation fiasco. But in hindsight, the junking of the Automated Counting and Data Transmission System was not so much about fighting corruption (for where has it led?). It was about killing automation.

ELECTORAL REFORM BY AUTOMATION IS OPPOSED BY THE ENTIRE POLITICAL MAFIA. THAT IS THE TRUE CHALLENGE FOR ALL PATRIOTS AND DEMOCRATS.