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BELTRAN, AYANA JANE R.

1JD-A

Recently, our elections have prompted calls for a reform of the voting
system. Many ideas have been put forward and one that is highly
recommended is an e-voting system, which will reduce the chaos that often
ensues on Election Day. May 10, 2010, after tremendous preparation, the
Philippines have gone through its first Philippine Automated Elections, when
the country experienced the breakthrough of IT in the electoral process.
But the controversial question is: Can we trust our votes through this
machines?
On the 24th of September, 2015, a Symposium at the New Era
University-Professional Schools Building was held. There, the speakers
tackled on the topic MAY KWENTA PA BA ANG BOTO MO? In the said lecture
series, the speakers discussed the disadvantages of automated voting, the
discrepancies and technical difficulties faced by the Nation through the said
Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine supplied by the Smartmatic
Asia.
According to Section 1 of the Republic Act 9369 or An Act Amending
Republic Act No. 8436, it is said that It is policy of the State to ensure free,
orderly, honest, peaceful, credible and informed elections, plebiscites,
referenda, recall and other similar electoral exercises by improving on the
election process and adopting systems, which shall involved the use of an
automated election system that will ensure the secrecy and sanctity of the
ballot and all election, consolidation and transmission documents on order
that the process shall be transparent and credible and that the results shall
be fast, accurate and reflective of the genuine will of the people. But as
discussed, the main purpose of the automated elections has not been
followed.
The machines, as required, shall be secure, ballots must be authentic,
and the counting of votes shall be accurate. As promised by the Smartmatic,
the PCOS machines are 99.995% accurate.
As the IT expert discussed, the PCOS machine shall undergo
Comprehensive review. Which has not been done properly by the COMELEC.
Basically, there has been no comprehensive testing done in the last election,
resulted to technical problems. Also, no source code review was before the
election, rather, it was done after the election proper, wherein this is also
necessary to see if there are bugs or hidden factors (or Trojan Horse) that
may hack, or delete the information on every machine. The security shall
also be managed to avoid unauthorized transmission but then again, they

failed to do such, for in some situation in the election, 2 machines from


different IP address were sent in one cluster precinct. System Auditability,
Ballot Authenticity, and giving of the VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail)
which was also required, has also been failed to be done the the previous
elections. These all gives the authenticity, accuracy, and the credibility of
votes. And yet, it was all failed to be done.
The promised accuracy rate by the Smartmatic was not even achieved,
as it went 99.6% on the 2010 elections and it even declined on 2013 with a
98.86% of accuracy.
As discussed, the COMELEC also failed to put the PCOS machines on
test and review, for as Brillantes said, There is no time even though there
are still 511 days before the 2013 elections.
So given that the machines also failed to give us the purpose of
automated elections, the accurate, secure, and credible votes, it all goes
down to another question: Are there any other alternatives?
Apparently, one call for action is to ask for a receipt, or an evidence of
vote count. To ensure that your vote has been counted. But if the other
countries reverted from automated to manual counting of votes, why cant
we? 18 of 30 countries have reverted in to manual, and big countries like the
United Kingdom, and also Asian countries like Japan, and Malaysia have been
exercising manual vote count ever since.
In conclusion, the speakers of the said symposium have given us the
idea whether or not our right to suffrage is being well-exercised. And also,
encouraged us to go back to the basics, wherein the manual vote count shall
be exercised again. After all, it has been clear. We cannot entrust our votes
to machines.

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