By: Jerome Auza
To my dismay, COMELEC again decided to select and announce the precincts that will be manually audited before completion of the election process on May 9, 2016. In the 2013 elections, the random manual count audit precincts were known two days before. This year, they will be known in the morning of May 9.
The vote counting machine.
Why am I dismayed? Simple, if the precincts for random manual count audit are known before the actual casting of ballots and printing of results, there is still a chance of electronic cheating that cannot be detected even with NAMFREL and PPCRV doing a parallel tally. A clever programmer can simply add code in the vote counting machine (VCM) to activate a routine that would check if the VCM is included in the RMA list. If it is included, it will count the real votes so that the manual count audit and the election returns will match.
If the VCM is not included in the list, then the VCM will simply output a pre-programmed result on the print outs and on the data that it will send to COMELEC and other recipients. The list can exist somewhere in the network that the VCMs can connect to.
The window of opportunity to do output the rigged results is the time between the VCM goes online and before the election returns are printed. This is possible because once the VCM can go online, it can already check if it is included in the list for audit.
The RMA is supposed to prevent cheating in the ballot counting. It could do that job if the selection of the precincts for audit is done after the VCMs have submitted the results electronically. This is because all precincts may be subject to RMA and once the results are sent out, these can no longer be changed. All precincts must have correct count otherwise there is risk that the RMA will be able to find discrepancies in the counts.
In addition, the selection of the precincts for audit is done using a “program”, most likely a computer program. This opens up another opportunity to cheat because who knows if the output of the program is already predetermined? In 2010, this was done through a joint effort by COMELEC, NAMFREL and PPCRV. In that election, the RMA was done correctly and did its purpose.
It is my hope that even with this possibility of cheating, COMELEC can handle all the work that needs to be done. To pull off the cheating I described above, there should be at least one very clever programmer with privileged access to the systems, a go signal from the top level people at COMELEC and lots of cash for motivation.
Whoever gets elected, the citizens must accept it. However, any form of manipulation of the results will not be good for the country.