Assignment 3 (MIS)

SITUATIONER
The conduct of elections in the Philippines for the past four decades has remained largely
unchanged. Philippine elections rely heavily on manual tallying and canvassing of votes thus making
them vulnerable to control and manipulation by traditional politicians and those with vested interests.
The cost of winning an elective post is highly expensive, and the absence of mechanisms to check
and limit sources of campaign funds become fertile grounds for corruption and divisiveness.
In recent years, initiatives to reform the electoral system included the enactment of the
following laws: Republic Act (RA) 8046, establishing a pilot program modernizing the registration
and vote counting process in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the Party List Law,
Fair Elections Act and the Absentee Voting Act. To address the inadequacies and limitations of the
electoral process, RA 8436 or the Election Automation Act of 1997, was passed authorizing the
Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to use automated election system for vote counting and
canvassing in the national and local polls. The law provided for the generation of a national
computerized voters list, establishment of a voters identification card system and the automation of
the vote counting.
However, sectoral issues still hinder reform efforts in the electoral process. The following
have been identified as basic problems afflicting the electoral system: (a) outdated electoral
process; (b) failure to implement the electoral modernization law; (c) limited administrative and
regulatory capabilities of the COMELEC; (d) ineffective educational/information campaigns on
new laws and policies; (e) weak political party system; (f) unaccountable political financing; and
(g) defective party list system (Governance Assessment, 2003).
II. GOALS, STRATEGIES AND ACTION PLANS
To ensure a credible and transparent electoral process, the modernization of the electoral
system through computerization shall be supported to ensure the credibility of polls and correct the
deficiencies in the electoral system. Likewise, the Omnibus Election Code shall be further revised
and amended to respond to the needs of the present electoral system.
Measures to strengthen the party system and regulate the activities of political parties shall
be created. State financing of political parties shall also be considered through the passage of the
Campaign Finance Bill.
The COMELEC’s capacity to raise the level of political discourse and educate citizens
regarding their right to vote will be enhanced. This will be done through conduct of continuing
citizen and voter education through partnership with civil society groups and other government
Chapter 13
Automated Elections
Automated Elections
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institutions. The electorate must be empowered with information that would help them vote
intelligently. The challenge is to develop the people’s appreciation of their vote as a means to
reform the government and receive better services from it. Part of this challenge is the need to
raise the awareness of the electorate on relevant issues and the corresponding platforms of the
candidates, if the country is to shift from the politics of personality to the politics of party
programs.

Automated election fraud

AUTOMATED ELECTION fraud like manual election fraud can be divided into two parts:

1. Retail cheating in the counting and preparation of precinct election returns.

2. Wholesale fraud in the transmission and canvassing at the municipal, district, city and provincial levels.

Fraud usually does not happen at the national level since there are fewer numbers to transmit and canvass, and there are many eyes focused on the process.

We will start by discussing how fraud can be done on the OMR (optical mark reading) counting machines.

Then we will discuss how fraud can take place in transmission and canvassing.

The Comelec claims that we will finally have clean and honest elections because the 2010 elections will be fully automated.

The old cheaters who are computer illiterate and not in Comelec or with the automated system vendors may indeed find that their old tricks will no longer work.

Misreading and manual tampering of ERs and COCs will no longer be possible.

Transparency

The beauty of the old system of writing names of candidates voted for, public reading of votes in front of watchers and citizens, tallying and manual preparation of election returns was that it was visible.

At times there could have been fraud. But it was visible. Maybe sometimes due to guns and goons, people would just keep quiet.

In the new OMR system voters will feed the ballot into the machine the next thing they will see is the printed election return.

Whether their votes were properly counted they will not know.

Transparency at the precinct level is gone.

Fraud can take place and the voters and watchers at the precinct will not know if fraud has taken place.

Comelec’s claims

Comelec claims that the AES (automated election system) cannot be hacked and that the source code will be open for inspection.

These are good for Comelec’s PR efforts, but they do not make automated elections safe from fraud. In fact, they are smoke screens that cover the real areas where fraud can take place.

The Random House Encyclopedia defines hacking as unauthorized access to a computer, either for fun or for malicious or fraudulent purposes.

Hackers generally use microcomputers and telephone lines to obtain access.

In computing, the term is used in a wider sense to mean using software for enjoyment or self-education, not necessarily involving unauthorized access.

Hacking is not the problem and, therefore, spending time and money to prevent hacking is not very useful.

If only outsiders would rob you in your home then having grilled windows, special locks, alarms, etc. will ensure your safety.

But if you live in the company of thieves, you can still be robbed. That is what the police refer to as an “inside job.”

The greatest danger of fraud in the 2010 computerized elections will come from insiders in Comelec and computer vendors, not from outsiders.

In a recent meeting of the Management Association of the Philippines Election Automation subcommittee, with former Customs and BIR Commissioner Guillermo Parayno, we asked him whether his agencies had ever been hacked.

His answer was no, any intrusions were always by insiders.

Source code inspection

The other point Comelec likes to stress is that the source code of the OMR counting machines will be available for inspection by computer experts.

Looking at the source code is practically useless.

OMR machines are used in schools for scoring tests and in survey companies for tabulating survey results.

Members of the administrative staff in schools and survey companies do not change the source code. They provide a scoring or tabulating table to modify how the OMR machine scores a test or tabulates a survey.

By changing this table, fraud is easily committed.

In order to cheat on the OMR counting machines, all that is needed is to download a new counting table that changes for whom a shaded circle is counted.

In areas where the candidates that want to cheat are weak, the table can be modified so that votes will be switched.

This does not have to be done on all machines.

If done on even just 10 percent of the OMR machines, a tight race may be reversed in favor of those who are cheating.

How would the counting tables be switched? Since the OMR machines are connected to the Internet, it is possible for an outside party, in connivance with Comelec or system vendor people, to enable an unseen computer to load the fraudulent table.

At the end of counting, the original table can be reloaded so that any tests would indicate that the machines are counting correctly and honestly.

It could also be possible for someone that seems to be authorized to quickly insert a USB memory stick that would load the fraudulent table.

Fraud at provincial level

While the Comelec has budgeted P8.2 billion for machines rental of OMR machines, it has only budgeted P200 million for transmission and P200 million for canvassing.

There is no provision for parallel transmission and canvassing. Therefore, there is no provision for audit.

In the old manual system, the hard copy of the precinct ERs were brought to the municipality to be read and entered in the statement of votes, which was visible to watchers. Watchers could compare the statement of votes with their own copies of the ER. Before the ER was read and added to the statement of votes, the authenticity of the ER was first verified.

This process took time and caused delays when lawyers argued, but at least citizens could see what was going on, hopefully make sure that votes were properly canvassed and at the very least be aware that frauds had taken place.

The Comelec AES has no safeguards against insider-initiated fraud. It assumes that the Comelec and the vendor officials, managers and staff are absolutely honest. It assumes that an automated system will not commit mistakes or fraud.

In the Comelec system, massive fraud can take place, but it will not be discovered until after the beneficiaries of fraud have been proclaimed.

Good luck with the election protests to the real winners who were defrauded!

How can fraud be done?

While RA 9369 provides for the printing of up to 30 copies of ERs and their posting at the precinct, the single transmission and canvassing system can move much faster.

Some vendors claim that national candidates could be proclaimed in less than 48 hours.

Unfortunately, the political parties and citizens arms cannot move that fast and would not be able to point to fraudulent manipulation before the rushed proclamation of the favored candidates, as what recently happened in Iran.

It is interesting that while it was said that the slow transmission and canvassing in the old manual system created many opportunities for fraud, in the new automated system, very fast transmission and canvassing in 2010 may lead to massive fraud, frustrating the true votes of our nation.

I would propose that legislation be passed to deliberately institute auditing steps at each level.

There is nothing wrong with the national count taking two weeks. There is a saying that haste makes waste. Let’s not have our new leaders elected by automated election fraud.

Smartmatic case

Avante has documented how Smartmatic was able to remotely change the ERs of three precincts in Wao in last year’s ARMM election.

Three precincts reported 0 votes because the number of votes exceeded the number of voters.

Smartmatic was able to remotely change the votes in the three precincts.

The Internet and the World Wide Web are powerful tools for doing good. They can also be used for evil.

Good or evil

My company uses the Internet and collaboration software to be able to access our customers’ computers and manipulate them as if we were onsite. The same could be done with the Comelec OMR machines and transmission and canvassing computers.

What could we do with such remote access and manipulation capabilities?

Someone could access OMR machines and change their vote counting tables temporarily to make some candidates get votes and others lose votes.

After counting, the proper tables could be restored so that the fraud would go undetected.

The same technology could be used to access municipal canvassing systems to change the COC prior to transmission. The best way to cheat would be to switch votes between candidates.

Something similar could be done on provincial canvassing computers.

Key safeguards

However, instead of altering the provincial COC, one could change the statement of votes of some municipalities. These changes would be reflected on the provincial COC.

How do we safeguard our vote?

In order to prevent automated election fraud, certain safeguards have to be instituted. These include:

1. The OMR machines should not have any network connection. The election results should be copied to USB memory sticks, which can subsequently be loaded to a separate PC that will transmit the results to the Comelec canvassing system at the municipality and to the dominant majority and minority parties, as well as to the citizens arms such as PPCRV and Namfrel.

2. The above parties should be provided with their own PCs to be able to produce their own COCs. If the Comelec COC does not match the COCs produced by other parties, a careful review should be done prior to transmission to the provincial level.

3. The verified municipal COC should then be transmitted to the multiple groups defined above. Again, the Comelec COC should be compared with the other COCs and the reason for discrepancies should be determined.

4. The verified Provincial COC should again be transmitted to multiple parties.

The Comelec and Congressional Canvass should again be compared to the parallel canvasses to assure that fraud is minimized as much as possible.

5. Each of the concerned groups should make their results available on their websites for the public to access.

If these proposed measures are followed, there will be true transparency and automated fraud will be minimized.


Opinion..

If I were to choose whether manual or automated election, I would rather choose automated because it will lessen the time of voting. With regards to the situation, many rumors that it will become worst if we will use the automated election because it will be manipulated by some of the people. But, security is more gained in automated election rather than manual.

Comparison between Manual and Automated Election..

Manual

1. manual testing no tool is available to test the application,you have to check the application manually by manually weither the application is working is working as per the client requirements or not.
2. Unsecured (due to bombings and thief)
3. Takes more time for results

Automated

1. Convenient
2. Gets a tally immediately
3. Fast Results
4. Secured
5. Transparent

The problem is..

1. Inaccurate
2. Disturbingly easy to hack
3. Automation testing tool is available to test the application weither the application is working is working as per the client requirements or not.


References:
http://www.neda.gov.ph/ads/mtpdp/mtpdp2004-2010/pdf/mtpdp%202004-2010%20neda_chapterx13_elections.pdf
http://business.inquirer.net/money/columns/view/20090706-214009/Automated-election-fraud