SMARTMATIC, not a smart move…As far as I have understood from what I have googled regarding the history of AES (Automated Election System) in the US, the study of using this system started around 1960’s. Feb 15, 1965 - Connecticut's Secretary of State, Mrs. Ella T. Grasso, plans to ask the Legislature to amend the election laws to permit consideration of 11 modern voting and counting systems. On the other side of the electronic-unit issue is the position of the Automatic Voting Machine Corporation. Aside from the fact that the use of this technology would be ideal for federal government, the process of adapting the use of AES took them years of trial and error before considering application.
What is it for us?
Manila, Philippines – SMARTMATIC entered the scene November last year proposing the use of their PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines aiming a fair, just and fraud-free election. About 50 million Filipinos have registered to vote in the 76,000 precincts using counting machines that would tabulate and transmit results electronically. These machines uses compact flash cards which contains smart algorythm commands to perform its duty and tabulate results flawlessly. According to some source, SMARTMATIC took 2 months to program all of these 76,000 compact flash cards for 76,000 precints and just now, less than a week before the actual election day, we have been informed that 100% of these flash cards contains erroneous program to count local ballots. COMELEC together with SMARTMATIC has to recall all compact flash cards that have been deployed and reconfigure them to read votes for the local ballots and it’s only because of some stupid layout error. If you come to think of it, the complexity of the system is far too ambiguous for us to adapt at this point in time. Re-programming and re-distribution of 76,000 compact flash cards in just 2 days is a tongue-in-cheek statement and could be the downfall of COMELEC and SMARTATIC which may result to failure of election. In return, we would still resort to parallel manual counting and that is obviously pathetic and ridiculous.
How safe are PCOS machines?
In Japan, votes in national and most local elections are cast by writing the candidate's or party's name on a blank ballot paper. In elections for the House of Representatives voters fill in two ballots, one with the name of their preferred district candidate and one with their preferred party in the proportional representation block. For the House of Councillors, the district vote is similar (In SNTV multi-member districts, several candidates can be elected, but every voter has only one vote). But in the proportional vote for the House of Councillors votes are cast for a party list (influences how many proportional seats a party receives) or a candidate (additionally influences which candidates are elected from a party's list). In 2002, passage of an electronic voting law allowed for the introduction of electronic voting machines in local elections. The first machine vote took place in Niimi, Okayama in June 2002. In 2003, a system for early voting was introduced. In the Japanese general election, 2009 a record number of more than 10 million Japanese voted early. Despite Japan’s technological advancement, they’d choose to adapt parallel manual counting system not until 2003.
Now, the anxious us would wonder how safe is it really for us to use these PCOS machines? My answer… We are not safe at all!!! It does not guarantee that these machines would be free from fraud and cannot be manipulated. Actually, it would be a lot easier to alter results. It could be done just by switching re-progammed compact flash cards to PCOS machines in order to manipule the tabulation system.
In conclusion…
The use of the system should not be taken lightly. This should have gone a rigorous study that should have taken years before considering the adapatability of not just our technological advancement but also the availablity of human resources knowledgeable enough to relay the process.
The few months SMARTMATIC spent pushing and forcing the application of the system is not enough to make a certain judgement that we would have a fraud-free and successful election. And I fear and anticipating its epic failure…
