TABLE I.
MAJOR COMELEC VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW IN IMPLEMENTING THE AUTOMATED
ELECTION SYSTEM (AES)
MAJOR CRITERIA
1. Republic Act 9369
1.2 Sec 6. Use of AES
"for the regular national and
local election, which shall be
held immediately after
effectivity of this Act
[approved Jan 23, 2007], the
AES shall be used in at least
two highly urbanized cities and
two provinces each in Luzon,
Visayas and Mindanao ..."
"In succeeding regular national
or local elections, the AES shall
be implemented nationwide."
COMELEC ASSESSMENT
PERFORMANCE
The AES contracted by Comelec's non compliance with the law resulted in
Comelec in July 2009 a completely untested and unaudited system. The
was not used in two only testing made was at the precinct level and used in
urbanized cities and conjunction with sporadic voter training. No system
two provinces each in testing was made with the Boards of Canvassers for the
Luzon, Visayas and municipal, city, provincial and national levels. No testing
Mindanao prior to the was also made to determine whether the voting
2010 national and local continuity and contingency measures were realizable.
elections.
As a result, it led to the following problems,
The AES was diiculties, irregularities and inaccuracies during
IMPLEMENTED LIVE the elections:
NATIONWIDE 1. Long queues of voters waiting to vote for more than
immediately in the 3 hours in order to locate their precincts, resulting in 3
2010 elections, after a to 5 million disenfranchised voters.
nationwide preparation 2. Erroneous count of 253 million registered voters in
period of 8 ½ months. the Server of the House of Representatives.
3. Failure to read 3 to 4 million “null” votes recorded
nationwide.
4. Printed election returns containing dates before,
during and after 10 May 2010 and printed on credit
cards thermal papers.
5. Many election returns showed only 10 votes from
about 500 to 600 actual voters, indicating that these
returns were based on test ballots prior to Final
Testing and Sealing of the PCOS machines.
6. Electoral protests at various levels in 41 provinces
and cities.
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SEC. 7. Section 7 of Republic
Act No. 8436 is hereby
amended to read the follows:
"SEC.6. Minimum System
Capabilities. - "The automated
election system must at least
have the following functional
capabilities:
(a) Adequate security against
unauthorized access
The congressional inquiry at the House of
Representatives (Locsin hearing) “showed that there
was electoral fraud committed, and substantiated
by documentary evidence, with Comelec and
Smartmatic, keeping the public in the dark about the
many ways one could cheat through the machines, the
many irregularities and last minute changes in orders
coming from Comelec that provided many opportunities
to cheat and manipulate the votes for favored
candidates.”
(Please see more details in the following items
below.)
Comelec provided in its
Technical
Specifications as
part of its Contract,
Section VII, with
Smartmatic the
following provisions: POINT 1. The PCOS machine uses an Ultra Violet (UV)
Security Mark Sensor to determine the genuiness of a
“Component 1B: ballot. Prior to the elections, this UV Sensor was disabled
PCOS Specifications by Comelec.
15. The system shall
be able to detect and The Locsin hearing confirmed that SMARTMATIC
reject fake or spurious, provided all the paper, UV ink, and several printing
and previously– machines for National Printing Office (NPO) to print the
scanned ballots. “ ballots. Ms. Grace Enriquez of NPO and Mr. Flores of
Smartmatic confirmed that the PCOS cannot read the UV
ink printed ballots because of the lessened density of the
UV ink due to the heightened printing speed to meet the
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(b) Accuracy in recording and
reading of votes as well as in
the tabulation,
consolidation/canvassing,
electronic transmission, and
storage of results;
printing deadline.
Instead, Comelec immediately purchased some 76,000+
handheld UV readers that were not used during the
elections.
POINT 2. In the Locsin hearing, it was confirmed that
the Compact Flash (CF) cards of the PCOS can allow
the reinsertion and acceptance of already scanned
ballots. Later, both Ms. Quimson of Navigation
Information and Mr. Flores said that scanned or
previously read ballots can be re-fed into the
computers even without a change of CF card.
There was no way to know whether the ballots
read during the elections were genuine or fake.
POINT 3. The Joint Forensic Team, commissioned by the
Joint Canvassing Committee reported June 9, 2010 the
discovery that the PCOS machines have a controlling
CONSOLE PORT which allowed the unsecured
vulnerability of the PCOS machines to manipulation and
open to malicious control and electoral fraud.
Through an unsecure (that is, with no username and
password) connection of a laptop, the laptop was able to
“10 The [PCOS] system access the operating system of the PCOS machine.
shall count the voter’s Smartmatic was not able to offer a technical explanation
vote as marked on the to this major security breach loophole.
ballot with an accuracy
rating of at least The Namfrel terminal report, released July 2, 2010, said
99.995 %. “ the random manual audit of certain precincts showed
that the degree of variance was less than what was the
required 99.995 percent accuracy. The overall
performance of the machine is 99.35 percent accuracy,
which was below the required 99.995 percent.
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Corollary provision:
1.11 Sec 18 and 19 Election
returns
B. Electronic Transmission
"The election returns
transmitted electronically
and digitally signed shall be
considered as official
election results and shall be
used as the basis for the
canvassing of votes and
the proclamation of a
candidate."
SEC. 25. "Authentication of
Electronically Transmitted
Election Results. - The manner
of determining the authenticity
and due execution of the
certificates shall conform with
the provisions of Republic Act
No. 7166 as may be
supplement or modified by the
provision of this Act, where
applicable, by appropriate
authentication and
certification procedures for
electronic signatures as
provided in Republic Act
No. 8792 [Electronic
Commerce Act] as well as the
rules promulgated by the
Supreme Court pursuant
thereto."
“22. The system shall,
before transmission, Extrapolating this percentage to 76,340 precincts, it will
require the electronic amount to about 345,000 ballots inaccurately read.
authentication and
certification of the The digital signature is the primary feature to
election returns determine the authenticity and verifiability of the
through a secure election returns from the precincts. Thus, the Contract
mechanism by at least specified these as the second main deliverable of
two BEI members. “ Smartmatic.
“23. The system shall POINT 1. Comelec issued Resolution 8786 March 4,
transmit digitally 2010 that no longer required the use of digital
signed and encrypted signatures. The Resolution stated:
election results and
reports enabled by "WHEREAS, there is a need to amend or revise portions
public/private key of Resolution No. 8739 in order to fine tune the process
cryptography to and address procedural gaps;
provide authenticity, SEC. 40. Counting of ballots and transmission of results
integrity and non- f) Thereafter, the PCOS shall automatically count
repudiation utilizing at the votes and immediately display a message
least 128-bit encryption "WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIGITALLY SIGN THE
scheme.” TRANSMISSION FILES WlTH A BEI SIGNATURE
KEY?", with a "YES" or 'NO" option;
Component 1C. g) Press "NO" option.
Consolidation/Canva The PCOS will display "ARE YOU SURE YOU DO
ssing System (CCS) NOT WANT TO APPLY A DIGlTAL SIGNATURE?" with
“1.12 Allow the BOCs a "YES" and "NO" option;
to digitally sign all h) Press "YES" option."
electronic results and
reports before POINT 2. The Locsin Report stated: “14. The digital
transmission;” signature—only of a particular PCOS—and not of the BEI
person herself was conceded as being, for practical
but not legal purposes, sufficient compliance with the
intent of the E-Commerce and Automated Election laws.
============== The Chair argued that a PCOS [or machine] digital
========== signature serves equally as the digital signature of the
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With regards to the BEI who has custody of the machine because it is
Schedule of possible to link one to the other.”
Requirements of the
Contract, Section VI: POINT 3. The Joint Forensic Report however proved that
“1.2 Digital signatures” such practical purposes was not true, as there were no
[for all users of PCOS, such digital signatures. The Report stated:
CCS and various
servers--- 257,425 to “ Absence of Machine Digital Signatures
be delivered by Examination o the PCOS machines revealed that there
November 11, 2009] was no evidence ound to prove the existence of digital
certificates in the PCOS machines, contrary to the claims
of Smartmatic. The technicians o Smartmatic were not
able to show to the forensic team the machine version of
the digital signature, alleging that they do not have the
necessary tools to show the same. More so, they were
at a quandary as to how to extract the said machine
signatures--- to the dismay of the forensic team.

If there are digital certificates, then these were supposed

to be revealed. The forensic team tried to extract the
digital signatures but to no avail. Hence, the forensic
team is of the opinion that there exists no digital
signature in the PCOS machine.”

POINT 4. Without the digital signatures (whether that of

the PCOS or the BEI), there is no way to check in the CCS
servers in the municipality, city, province and national to
know which PCOS machine (authorized or unauthorized)
is transmitting to their CCS servers.

This is crucial with the discovery of 60 PCOS machines

and 2 Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) in
Antipolo in the house of a Smartmatic technician (who
could not show any authority for safekeeping, back up
and to which CCS he is transmitting), and the subject of
the Forensic team’s investigation.
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“(e) Provision for voter verified
paper audit trail;
(n) Provide the voter a system
of verification to find out
whether or not the machine
has registered his choice“
(f) System auditability which
provides supporting
documentation for verifying
the correctness of reported
election results;
POINT 5. As proven above, there were no digital
signatures used in all level of the AES. Therefore, the
Comelec announced Board of Canvassers themselves, from the municipal,
the capability for the city, provinces and national canvassing centers, cannot
voter to verify his vote authenticate, duly execute and certify the Certificates of
choices after his ballot Canvass they transmit electronically to the higher levels
was read by the PCOS. of canvassing.
Later, this voter Thus, all the BOC proclamations are null and void
verifiability feature was from the beginning.
disabled. Only the
word The voter had no way to check whether the PCOS
"CONGRATULATIONS" correctly read and recorded his vote choices.
was shown in the PCOS
LCD after the voter’s
ballot was read.
No receipt was printed
to be given to the voter
for the voter to check
whether his choices
were actually read and
recorded by the PCOS
machine.
Only a printed Election
Return tape was
prepared after the
counting.
In the consolidation and
canvassing centers, the
outputs are the
Statement of Votes and
the summarized
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“1.13 Sec. 24 Random Manual
Audit
Where the AES is used, there
shall be a random manual
audit in one precinct per
congressional district randomly
chosen by the Commission in
each province and city. Any
difference between the
automated and manual count
will result in the determination
of root cause and initiate a
manual count for those
precincts affected by the
computer or procedural error."
“SEC. 11. Functions of the
Technical
Evaluation Committee.
The Committee shall certify,
through an established
international certification
entity to be chosen by the
Commission from the
recommendations of the
Advisory Council, not later
Certificates of Canvass. No Statement of Votes (SOV) accompanied the
Certificates of Canvass (COC). The SOV is the details of
the votes by precincts (indicated in the election returns)
by which the summary votes of each candidates in the
A Random Manual Audit COC can be verified and checked.
was conducted for 5
precincts for each Comelec stated that it will take some time to print
congressional district or 10,000 SOV recorded in the CCS servers of the Board of
a total of 1,145 of the Canvassers.
76,340 precincts
nationwide. The results of 30 RMA precincts were released and
announced as of 15 May 2010.
Last 20 May, Comelec announced results of about 300
RMA precincts were completed with few discrepancies.
In the Locsin hearing, Amb. de Villa of PPCRV reported
the partial results of the RMA. Out of the 1,145 randomly
selected precincts, 845 precincts have already submitted
reports, 15 precincts’ results were in transit leaving 285
precincts with no results yet.
As of this writing, Comelec has not published the
results of this Random Manual Audit.
Comelec commissioned SysTest Lab submitted a report with some 4,000
SysTest Lab of the USA comments for action by Comelec. No official
to review the source announcement by Comelec whether these SysTest
code. comments were addressed.
The lack of transparency by the Comelec made the
Supreme Court to order Comelec to produce the relevant
documentation on these items.
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than three months before the
date of the electoral exercises,
categorically stating that the
AES, including its hardware
and software components, is
operating properly, securely,
and accurately, in accordance
with the provisions of this Act
based, among others, on the
following documented results:
1. The successful conduct of a
field testing process followed
by a mock election event in
one or more
cities/municipalities;
2. The successful completion
of audit on the accuracy,
functionally and security
controls of the AES software;
5. A certification that the
source code reviewed is one
and the same as that used by
Bid Specifications
"Annex E" stated that Tests were conducted only at precinct level, none at the
"There shall be as municipal, city, provincial and national.
many field tests as may
be necessary until the
requirements for the
tests have been
satisfied provided that
the tests shall not go
beyond December 5,
2009. All systems shall
be tested on site, i.e. in
selected locations
nationwide covering
different test voting
centers, test
consolidation sites, and
test canvassing sites.
The test shall also
include live
transmission of precinct
results. COMELEC The Joint Forensic Team reported that “the hash codes
personnel shall operate for the firmware residing in the 6 PCOS machines found
all systems in the test. in Antipolo have the same SMA256 output ... However, a
thorough comparison with the official document posted
in the Comelec website revealed that the published hash
code is not the same as the extracted one [from the
PCOS machines.”
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the equipment; and
This indicates that the computer programs in the
PCOS machines have been altered.

HRE As of 03 July 2010