Too soon to call 2010 elections successful

It is too soon to declare the 2010 elections a success. 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 honest election has finally happened, at last. But the vice-presidential election is yet to be [...]

Expect a flood of demands for recount from losing candidates

The PCOS fiasco a few days before the May 10 elections has shattered the credibility not only of election automation, but of the entire electoral process itself. The entire process hinges on an accurate count by the PCOS machine. In fact, COMELEC specifications require at least 99.995% accuracy, or at most one error for every [...]

HALAL analysis of recently-released SysTest source code review

Halalang Marangal (HALAL) recently obtained a copy of the SysTest report on the source code review of the Smartmatic software that it conducted Oct. 26, 2009 to Feb. 9, 2010. This review was the basis for the Comelec concluding that the Smartmatic Automated Election System will count our May 10 votes properly, securely and accurately. [...]

Partial failure of automation has already occurred; how to determine if the failure is total

The printing of 50.85 million ballots for the May 10 elections is now complete. The COMELEC said they were two days ahead of schedule. This early finish, however, was achieved at terrible cost: the high-speed printing caused the misalignment of the ultraviolet security mark on the ballot by one to two millimeters. This led the [...]

How to show that a PCOS voting machine is accurate enough

The COMELEC has already rejected 100% manual audit proposal. That should be the end of it. Yet, it is hard ignore the voices of the country’s major information technology organizations, business oranizations, legal organizations, election watchdogs, church organizations, and other sectors – all counselling the COMELEC to do a 100% manual audit, since this is [...]

50.85 million ballots printed: how many have misaligned ovals?

The news just came in: the printing of ballots for the May 10 national elections is now complete — all 50.85 million of them. We already know, by COMELEC’s own admission, that many of these 50.85 million ballots have misaligned ultraviolet security marks. The niggling question is: how many of these 50.85 million ballots also [...]

Four opportunities to check PCOS accuracy: all taken away by COMELEC

The Filipino voting public had four opportunities for checking the scanning accuracy of the PCOS machine, but the three were all taken away by COMELEC, while the fate of the fourth still hangs in the balance. Acceptance testing by COMELEC Everytime Smartmatic delivered a batch of machines, COMELEC should have tested the machines before accepting [...]

Three things the COMELEC can do to assuage our concerns

This is the latest letter of HALAL to the COMELEC. The HALAL suggestions are important and urgent. Let us all add our voices to these suggestions. Halalang Marangal April 20, 2010 The En Banc COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS Palacio del Gobernador Intramuros, Manila Hon. Chairman JOSE A. R. MELO Hon. Commissioner RENE V. SARMIENTO Hon. Commissioner [...]

PCOS machines in Philippine automated elections: failure rates, error rates

According to the news, two of the twenty PCOS machines in Hongkong stopped working for a while. That is a 10% failure rate. Cesar Flores of Smartmatic claims they expect a PCOS failure rate of 0.3- 0.5%. However, vendor claims must be taken with a grain of salt, more so if their goods were hurriedly [...]

More stink at the Comelec: 1.68 million folders for P0.638 billion?

And I thought P1 billion for some 80,000 UV lamps stank so much that you could smell the overprice a mile away. This one, you could smell 10 miles away! [UPDATE: A more recent story by Malaya says the Comelec has rescinded the contract. Just like that? Nobody will be prosecuted for approving and awarding [...]