Saturday, May 15, 2010

Post-Election Analysis: HALAL to COMELEC

This is an important press statement of one Mr. Roberto Verzola from Halalang Marangal who has been closely studying automated elections for over 4 years and has been advising Comelec as an independent outsider. Halalang Marangal has a former Comelec Commissioner as a member of its Board. From a professor at UP Los Banos: “I know Obet Verzola because he is a member of our Pabinhi group. Super intelligent and credible guy, and a strong vanguard of people's rights during the elections. His involvement with Comelec goes way back, and he has always put out thorough, deep and highly credible reports.”

From: Roberto Verzola <rverzola@gn.apc.org> 
Date: May 12, 2010 9:46:20 PM GMT+08:00 
To: Philippine Greens <philippinegreens@yahoogroups.com> 
Cc: No to BNPP <NOtoBNPP@googlegroups.com>, AER_buzz@yahoogroups.com, stopthewar.philippines@lists.riseup.net, "Korakora.org List" <kuro@korakora.org>
Subject: [NOtoBNPP] Post-election analysis by HALAL, please circulate 
Reply-To: notobnpp@googlegroups.com

HALALANG MARANGAL PRESS STATEMENT (May 12, 2010)

HALAL to Comelec: Too soon to proclaim. Too many questions.

Early reports of discrepancies between machine and audit counts
in Manila highlight the need for prudence, especially since
machine-count winner Alfredo Lim was prematurely proclaimed May
11, 3 p.m., barely 15 hours after election day and without
waiting for the audit results.

People want a successful election so badly, that it is easy to
get carried away by flood of incoming election returns. Many
want to believe that a clean and speedy election has finally
happened, at last. But let not the public euphoria at the speed
of counting erase the persistent concerns about the process.

The vice-presidential election is yet to be settled. The contest
between the 12th and 13th places in the senatorial race still
has to be settled too. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of local
races also await to be settled.

Already news is coming in about delayed Election Returns (ERs),
malfunctioning, missing or otherwise questionable memory cards,
and other indicators of potential or emerging problems.

This is not to say we advocate a full return to the old manual
system, but only a prudent scrutiny of the automated process in
the light of its earlier miscounts, apart from the automated
results. In 2004, many who wanted “anyone but FPJ” embraced the
results, relieved that the elections fulfilled their
expectations, and chose to ignore the niggling questions that
eventually exploded in our collective faces as the “Hello Garci”
scandal. Let us not repeat the same mistake; let the niggling
questions be answered satisfactorily, before we finally accept
the final results.

As in the manual system, the precinct level count is always the
fastest. Even when election inspectors, watchers and the public
counted votes by hand, most of the election results had always
been available past midnight or early morning. Even under the
manual method, the biggest challenge has always been at the
municipal level and higher, where wholesale cheating operations
occurred.

In fact, the automated election system failed spectacularly its
first truly public test a week before election day, when many
candidates got zero – a “bawas” -- and some got more than the
votes actually cast for them – a “dagdag”. The results were
worse than most manual counts. An embarrassed Comelec quickly
called off the public test, and traced the problem to misaligned
ovals on the ballot. Because of a last-minute change from
single-spacing to double-spacing in the ballot layout for local
candidates, their oval locations did not anymore match the
coordinates stored in a configuration file in a memory card
within the PCOS machine.

Reconfiguring the memory cards was somewhat easier than
reprinting ballots, so that is what the Comelec and Smartmatic
tried to do.

Smartmatic only had 18,000 spare memory cards, so in addition to
the spares, Smartmatic recalled the cards that could still be
recalled; imported the rest from Hongkong and Taiwan; edited
each of the 1,631 ballot layout configuration files (unique for
every town); programmed these configuration files into 76,340
memory cards (one for each machine); delivered the 76,340 newly
reconfigured memory cards to the waiting machines all over the
archipelago; found the right machines for the right memory
cards; replaced the misconfigured memory card; and conducted a
second round of public testing and sealing of the PCOS machines.
All within a span of five days – 120 hours. Aside from some 400
machines that malfunctioned, the rest of the 76,340 machines
worked fine and gave the country its first successful automated
elections. So they say.

Can we now trust the machine results?

These machines had grievously failed to count a few days
earlier. This was followed by a mad rush of recalls,
importations, file reconfigurations, card reprogramming,
deliveries, reinstallations, and a second round of testing and
sealing. In the rush, were security procedures and chain of
custody guidelines still observed? Did anyone see an election
inspector with an ultraviolet lamp to check for authentic
ballots, for instance? (We have not found anyone who did.) What
about more subtle potential problems that a ten-ballot test set
was insufficient to detect – ovals that were misaligned by only
one or two millimeters, for example, or oval coordinates that
were purposely changed slightly to shave votes from targetted
candidates. Were tests done at all for these potential problems?

Suppose an ATM had earlier given you only half the money than it
deducted from your account, and the bank tells you the machine
is now ok. Wouldn't you count the money yourself at least once
in subsequent withdrawals? Suppose most ATMs of a bank network
shortchanged its clients, wouldn't you demand every ATM of that
network to be carefully tested and recertified for its counting
accuracy?

For exactly the same reason, every candidate who lost – and
won – in the machine-counted 2010 elections should demand
thorough post-election testing and audit for accuracy of every
counting machine and its results.

Losing candidates should demand it, because they might have
actually won.

Winning candidates – especially those who lead by a huge
margin – should demand it, because the gross machine errors a
few days earlier and subsequent doubts about machine accuracy
have devalued their victory.

Apparent president-elect Noynoy Aquino should demand it, if only
for the sake of his running-mate. We welcome his reported
intention to revisit “all issues his camp raised during the
campaign against the automation,” especially since one of the
more than 400 counting machines that failed conked out on him.
The results from the random manual audit must be awaited, and
the issues that may arise from it resolved. Questions that were
unsatisfactorily addressed before election day and especially
about the CF memory card fiasco must be answered.

There was no time for proper testing in the mad rush to the May
10 elections because few wanted the elections postponed. But we
have fifty days before June 30, when the new set of elected
officials are scheduled to take over. Remember, haste makes
waste. We still have enough time check, double-check, and be
sure about the results of the 2010 elections.

In the meantime, the Comelec and local election authorities
should not be in a hurry to proclaim winners and to declare the
elections a success. ###

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