AES Sub-Project March April
Hardware 80% 80%
Software 70% 70%
Logistics 80% 90%
Transmission 70% 90%
Ballot Printing 80% 70%
Overall AES Project 25% 32%
| THREE THINGS THE COMELEC TO ASSUAGE PEOPLE’S CONCERNS ABOUT THE AES (HALAL) We are deeply concerned that the risk of failure of the Automated Election System (AES) remains unacceptably high. But it is very late in the day to return to the old manual system, which may not save us either. It will simply mean business-as-usual for the cheats, who have mastered the manual system so well that they can manipulate its results in their sleep. Halalang Marangal (HALAL) proposes three simple things for the COMELEC to do that can help lead us out of this dilemma. THREE THINGS WE ASK FROM THE COMELEC TO ASSUAGE PEOPLE'S CONCERNS ABOUT THE AES: ONE. We ask the COMELEC to assign every scanning machine and its associated precinct cluster a simple unique identifier and widely disseminate this information to the public. Why? Because this will make the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines more accountable, just as vehicles with license plates, or policemen with visible name plates, are more accountable. It empowers the voting public better when they know exactly the individual machine they are dealing with, making it easy to identify errant machines, send reports, complaints, etc. The unique identifiers of all machines in a polling center must be conspicuously displayed outside the center, in big characters. The ID of each PCOS must also be conspicuously displayed in the room where the machine is located. A unique identifier, known by all, is a fundamental requirement in any automation project. These unique PCOS IDs must be quickly added to the COMELEC Project of Precincts (POP), which is the master list of all polling precincts. The updated POP must be made available to the media and the public on a compact disc (CD), for quick copying and dissemination. (If a unique ID per PCOS already exists, then the COMELEC need only publicize them widely. Smartmatic is apparently using a Stock-Keeping Unit (SKU) system that uses seven digits for internal control. This is enough. The important thing is that the identifiers are unique per machine, that they are consistently used in all official lists and ERs, and that they are publicly known and, on election day, conspicuously displayed outside polling centers and in the precincts.) TWO. We ask the Comelec to authorize election inspectors to print before transmission 29 of the 30 Election Returns (ERs). Why? To make as many copies of the precinct results as possible, before the connection with a central server and its associated possibility that the authentic PCOS data may be overwritten with false data from the server during transmission. Also, to remove any cause for PPCRV and NAMFREL, Nacionalistas and Liberals, or national and local candidates of the same party, to dispute who should get ER originals. There may not be enough with eight copies, there will be enough with 29 copies. With so many copies of the original ER circulating, suppressing the truth will be much harder. The printed ER should contain the machine's unique ID. The ER originals can now go to more political parties, election watchdogs, media organizations, and other accredited civic groups. The 30th copy of the ER, printed after transmission, should be immediately read aloud by the BEI so that everyone who had received an earlier copy may make sure that their copy is identical with the 30th copy. If not, then the transmission has compromised the election results in the PCOS memory as well as the 30th copy. These, and the electronic ER copy just transmitted to the central servers, must now be presumed to contain false data and must be questioned. This must be noted in the minutes. But the 29 original ERs still contain the authentic data. THREE. We ask the COMELEC to authorize a 100% manual audit of the votes for president. Why? As a final check on the accuracy of the PCOS count, for the same reason that a bank teller still manually counts bills after they have been counted by a machine. The COMELEC reverted to a 100% manual audit of ballot authenticity after it was discovered that the high-speed printing caused 1-2 mm misalignment, which resulted in the inaccurate scanning of the UV security mark. For exactly the same reason, we need a 100% manual audit of the votes, to find out if a similar misalignment of ovals due to high-speed printing also resulted in the inaccurate scanning of marks. Without the PCOS feature that allows each voter to verify if his choices were correctly registered by the machine, a 100% manual audit is our only remaining option to check the scanning and counting accuracy of the PCOS. Earlier proposals that have been raised for a 100% manual audit covering three positions only were in the right direction. Our counsel to limit further the coverage of the audit to the president is meant to streamline the process even more, by making possible a very simple manual method as follows: The BEI will first count the ballots, and then sort them into separate stacks, one stack per presidential candidate. The stacks should be double-checked by individual watchers and elections watchdogs. The BEI will then count in public, aloud, the ballots in each stack. If the counts are correct, then the total of the counts will equal the number of ballots. If no discrepancy is found, we estimate that this method will take no more than one hour. If a discrepancy is found, it may take another half hour to confirm the accuracy of the manual count. (This is how some countries do their manual count. After voting closes, all ballots for one electoral jurisdiction are transported to a big hall or covered court, authenticated, and then dumped on the floor. "Scrutineers" then sort the ballots into stacks, one candidate, one stack. Double-checked, of course. If the contest is not very close, the heights of the stacks will show before the counting starts – even before the sorting is over – who won as member of parliament in that jurisdiction. On the same night, winners in most jurisdictions would be known, as well as the majority party if any, and then of course the prime minister – a clean and honest count, without automation.) We emphasize that extra care must be taken to make this manual audit 100% accurate, because it will serve as the standard against which the accuracy of the PCOS machine will be measured. The stacks and the final vote counts must be checked several times to detect and correct any errors. The results of this manual count of votes for president, including the total votes and any discrepancy in the totals, must be appended to the printed ERs and countersigned by the BEI. The results of the manual count will also be entered in the minutes. They should be taken into account before any winner is proclaimed. After all, the term of outgoing elected officials will end only in June 30. There is no need to rush any proclamation. Airplanes and ships are required by law to carry life vests and life boats, even if these are superfluous most of the time because air and sea accidents are rare. They are there not only to assuage passenger concerns, but also because of the lives they will save in those rare events when they are needed. Similarly, we ask the COMELEC for the following safety mechanisms: unique PCOS identifiers made public, 29 ERs printed before any transmission, and a 100% manual audit of the votes for president before proclaiming any winner. We hope the COMELEC will consider these HALAL recommendations for the 2010 elections, which we are now formally submitting to the COMELEC in the spirit of supporting the Commission's efforts to protect the integrity of the ballot and the sanctity of the people’s voice. |
Note that when estimating the overall chance of success of an entire project, comprising several sub-projects, each of which are essential to the success of the entire project, the individual probabilities of success of the sub-projects must be multiplied together, not averaged. Note too that we are estimating here the success or failure of automation, not the election itself.
In the hardware sub-project, there was no reason to modify our earlier assessment. Much of the hardware were still not fully tested, and neither were any test results made available to the public for scrutiny. Also, the purchase of 21% more memory cards than necessary remained unexplained, raising concerns that these extra memory cards, if they fall in the wrong hands, may be configured with false data and substituted for authentic cards.
In the software sub-project, no new developments occurred either, that might have led us to modify our assessment. The Systest Labs full report on its system audit and source code review remained inaccessible to the public, and no local group still has managed to conduct a source code review. PCOS software remained configured to disable the voter verification feature, an essential feature that enables voters to determine the accuracy of the PCOS with respect to the voters’ actual choices. The digital certification system remains in Smartmatic hands, instead of an independent third-party like the Department of Science and Technology.
In the logistics sub-project, HALAL has since learned that in addition to the three original small firms contracted to make nationwide deliveries of election paraphernalia for the Comelec, better capitalized forwarders like Air21, which have more experience in handling cargo, have also been contracted. This has led us to raise our estimate of this sub-project’s probability of success from 80% to 90%. Ensuring that paired ballots and PCOS machines, which are being delivered separately, will arrive on time in the right precincts remains a huge logistical problem.
In the transmission sub-project, HALAL has since learned that the Comelec will now be providing for 100% coverage of all precincts in terms of transmission capability, while the March 8 full-page ad of Smartmatic only reported enough transmission equipment to cover 70% of all precincts. Thus, we have raised our estimate of the probability of success of this sub-project from 70% to 90%. However, transmission problems even within Metro Manila as well as in remote provinces like Batanes still suggest that similar problems will occur on election day.
Under the ballot printing sub-project, the printing of 50.85 million ballots was reported by Comelec complete two days ahead of schedule.
It seems though that this early finish was attained at terrible cost. The Comelec says that the high-speed printing resulted in the “misalignment by one to two millimeters” of the ultraviolet security mark. The problem was serious enough that it led the Comelec to abandon the automatic PCOS authentication of ballots, in favor of a manual check for authenticity by shining a UV lamp on each ballot and letting the BEI determine ballot authenticity through visual inspection.
HALAL raises this important question: if the UV marks were misaligned due to the high-speed printing, could the ovals themselves have been similarly misaligned? Misaligned ovals would have very serious consequences. In the 1998 automation pilot in ARMM, according to a report on the Comelec website, similar ballot printing problems led the Comelec to manually recount ballots from Sulu and some municipalities of Lanao del Sur. However carefully voters will shade the ovals, if these ovals are misaligned, then the voters’ marks will also be misaligned, which will make the PCOS machine unreliable in scanning and counting the voters’ choices, in the same way it became so unreliable in scanning the UV marks that automatic scanning for ballot authenticity had to be abandoned.
Misalignment of ovals is far more serious than misalignment of UV marks for the following reason: misaligned UV marks will lead the PCOS machine to reject valid ballots, an obvious problem which voters will notice and complain about. Thus, the Comelec has no choice but to correct the problem. But misalignment of ballots leads to inaccurate vote counts, which will still be registered by the machine, although the voters will never know their votes were inaccurately registered. Thus if the Comelec chose to ignore this problem, no one will notice, and no one can complain. Earlier field tests and mock elections were announced by Comelec to be “almost perfect” and by Smartmatic to be “successful” despite numerous media reports of machines rejecting valid ballots and transmission problems even in Metro Manila. If they can make such false claims despite public knowledge of ballot rejections and transmission problems, it would be much easier for them to claim “successful” elections on May 10 despite inaccurate machine counts which no one will notice and complain about.
Because of this uncertain oval alignment, HALAL reduced its estimate of the probability of success of this sub-project from 80% to 70%.
Because of misaligned UV marks, the Comelec decided on its own, without prodding, to shift to a 100% manual audit for authenticity of the ballots, before any winner is proclaimed. The possible misalignment of ovals should have logically led to a similar 100% manual audit of ballots for accuracy of the machine counts, before any winner is proclaimed.
With the Comelec’s decision to reject the proposal for a 100% audit, and to stick instead to a random audit that covers only 1.5% of precincts, we have lost a fourth opportunity to ascertain the accuracy of the PCOS machines. Earlier, three other opportunities had also been lost: 1) the results of the acceptance tests remain inaccessible to the public; 2) the full reports of Systest Labs, which conducted a system audit and source code review, also remain inaccessible to the public; and 3) the voter verification feature of the machines was disabled. Sadly, the ten ballots that will be used by the BEI for testing three days before the elections are too few to reliably screen out inaccurate machines.
We will never know at all, it seems, how accurately these machines counted the voters’ choices.
April 29, 2010
In the hardware sub-project, there was no reason to modify our earlier assessment. Much of the hardware were still not fully tested, and neither were any test results made available to the public for scrutiny. Also, the purchase of 21% more memory cards than necessary remained unexplained, raising concerns that these extra memory cards, if they fall in the wrong hands, may be configured with false data and substituted for authentic cards.
In the software sub-project, no new developments occurred either, that might have led us to modify our assessment. The Systest Labs full report on its system audit and source code review remained inaccessible to the public, and no local group still has managed to conduct a source code review. PCOS software remained configured to disable the voter verification feature, an essential feature that enables voters to determine the accuracy of the PCOS with respect to the voters’ actual choices. The digital certification system remains in Smartmatic hands, instead of an independent third-party like the Department of Science and Technology.
In the logistics sub-project, HALAL has since learned that in addition to the three original small firms contracted to make nationwide deliveries of election paraphernalia for the Comelec, better capitalized forwarders like Air21, which have more experience in handling cargo, have also been contracted. This has led us to raise our estimate of this sub-project’s probability of success from 80% to 90%. Ensuring that paired ballots and PCOS machines, which are being delivered separately, will arrive on time in the right precincts remains a huge logistical problem.
In the transmission sub-project, HALAL has since learned that the Comelec will now be providing for 100% coverage of all precincts in terms of transmission capability, while the March 8 full-page ad of Smartmatic only reported enough transmission equipment to cover 70% of all precincts. Thus, we have raised our estimate of the probability of success of this sub-project from 70% to 90%. However, transmission problems even within Metro Manila as well as in remote provinces like Batanes still suggest that similar problems will occur on election day.
Under the ballot printing sub-project, the printing of 50.85 million ballots was reported by Comelec complete two days ahead of schedule.
It seems though that this early finish was attained at terrible cost. The Comelec says that the high-speed printing resulted in the “misalignment by one to two millimeters” of the ultraviolet security mark. The problem was serious enough that it led the Comelec to abandon the automatic PCOS authentication of ballots, in favor of a manual check for authenticity by shining a UV lamp on each ballot and letting the BEI determine ballot authenticity through visual inspection.
HALAL raises this important question: if the UV marks were misaligned due to the high-speed printing, could the ovals themselves have been similarly misaligned? Misaligned ovals would have very serious consequences. In the 1998 automation pilot in ARMM, according to a report on the Comelec website, similar ballot printing problems led the Comelec to manually recount ballots from Sulu and some municipalities of Lanao del Sur. However carefully voters will shade the ovals, if these ovals are misaligned, then the voters’ marks will also be misaligned, which will make the PCOS machine unreliable in scanning and counting the voters’ choices, in the same way it became so unreliable in scanning the UV marks that automatic scanning for ballot authenticity had to be abandoned.
Misalignment of ovals is far more serious than misalignment of UV marks for the following reason: misaligned UV marks will lead the PCOS machine to reject valid ballots, an obvious problem which voters will notice and complain about. Thus, the Comelec has no choice but to correct the problem. But misalignment of ballots leads to inaccurate vote counts, which will still be registered by the machine, although the voters will never know their votes were inaccurately registered. Thus if the Comelec chose to ignore this problem, no one will notice, and no one can complain. Earlier field tests and mock elections were announced by Comelec to be “almost perfect” and by Smartmatic to be “successful” despite numerous media reports of machines rejecting valid ballots and transmission problems even in Metro Manila. If they can make such false claims despite public knowledge of ballot rejections and transmission problems, it would be much easier for them to claim “successful” elections on May 10 despite inaccurate machine counts which no one will notice and complain about.
Because of this uncertain oval alignment, HALAL reduced its estimate of the probability of success of this sub-project from 80% to 70%.
Because of misaligned UV marks, the Comelec decided on its own, without prodding, to shift to a 100% manual audit for authenticity of the ballots, before any winner is proclaimed. The possible misalignment of ovals should have logically led to a similar 100% manual audit of ballots for accuracy of the machine counts, before any winner is proclaimed.
With the Comelec’s decision to reject the proposal for a 100% audit, and to stick instead to a random audit that covers only 1.5% of precincts, we have lost a fourth opportunity to ascertain the accuracy of the PCOS machines. Earlier, three other opportunities had also been lost: 1) the results of the acceptance tests remain inaccessible to the public; 2) the full reports of Systest Labs, which conducted a system audit and source code review, also remain inaccessible to the public; and 3) the voter verification feature of the machines was disabled. Sadly, the ten ballots that will be used by the BEI for testing three days before the elections are too few to reliably screen out inaccurate machines.
We will never know at all, it seems, how accurately these machines counted the voters’ choices.
April 29, 2010
