Despite the current automated election law that requires a voter’s receipt, Commission on Elections Chairman Sixto Brillantes appears bent on defying the law, as it was the Comelec that instructed Smartmatic not include voters’ receipts in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores, whose PCOS machines are to again be used for the 2013 elections said his machines can produce receipts but explained that it is the Comelec that does not want that function used.
Brillantes claimed that this receipt function is not necessary since past elections, done manually, did not require it and that receipt of voters will merely be used for vote-buying.
Apparently, the Comelec will again defy the automated law and do what it wants to do by way of discarding machine functions the poll commissioners want discarded.
Flores again claimed that his machines are foolproof and cannot be tampered with, despite the many errors committed by the machine and its operators during the 2010 elections.
Flores assured that all the glitches have been corrected, but failed to list what glitches and other errors have been corrected.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has virtually given the  go-signal in the use of the PCOSmachines as well as the consolidated canvassing system (CCS) machines in next year’s mid-term elections, expressing belief that appropriate measures are already in place to frustrate those out to cheat in the poll exercise.
But the chairman of the Senate committee on electoral reforms committee, Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel, remains “suspicious” saying that there are still some loopholes which he noted in yesterday’s proceedings that can destroy or taint the results of the polls, “no matter how accurate the machine is.”
In a briefing and demonstration conducted by Smartmatic-TIM which provided for the more than 80,000 PCOS machines during the 2010 elections, senators were told that these units are fool-proof and accurate.
“It is impossible to alter anything with this system and not be caught,” said Smartmatic president Flores before Pimentel’s committee and the select oversight committee on suffrafe.
This Flores claimed despite the fact that in 2010, there certainly was fraud and the system failed, with no one caught.
Based on the statements given by Enrile, he sees no reason to question the Comelec’s preparedness in carrying out a nationwide automated election system.
“I’m confident that these machines would not cheat for anybody, contrary to the claim of some others who have a financial interest. We have tested it. We elected a president and a vice president with these machines (in 2010). What are we going to elect in 2013? Twelve or 13 senators plus the local officials,” Enrile told reporters in an interview.
“They have already have it in place. They trained people. They’re implementing it already. The 2013 (pols) is no different election from 2010,” he added.
Although Pimentel noted that both the Smartmatic and the Comelec were able to address some of the concerns he raised, there are still some questions that are needed to be answered.
“Remember that we are only paying attention to the machines, but the automated elections have many aspects like transmission and consolidation and many questions are being asked on those aspects,” he said.
“I think even Smartmatic does not claim that it is cheat-proof. What they said is that if you cheat, you will be caught. And we should make cheating very difficult to consumate. That is one feature of automated election system that I am glad about,” he added.
Besides, the senator said, the mock elections conducted before them was more of a symbolic thing and expected to yield positive results given that only 17 ballots were cast.
“The manual count matched perfectly with the automated count as expected because of the ‘few-ness’ of the ballots. It does not have any meaning. There were only 17 ballots tested at 99.995% accuracy. I really expected a perfect match between manual and automated (system),” Pimentel said.
Pimentel agreed with Enrile insofar as trusting the Comelec’s readiness for the coming mid-term polls.
“The (Comelec) chairman said he is thankful for the early decision of the Supreme Court and he’s confident that they can conduct the automated election in 2013. So far so good. But you know that it is my job, I’m sorry to tell the Comelec as well as Smartmatic, to be suspicious. That is my job, to take the contrary view and to prepare for the worst case scenario,” he explained.
Pimentel said they will have to focus on the transmission and then the consolidation by the server in the next hearing since it also involves a software program.
“For one, I noticed that the screen (of the machines) should allow the voter to verify his vote before it is finally cast into the ballot box. But this feature was disabled in 2010. But even if we enable this feature, I noticed that the screen is too small. So you need to press a lot of bottons to scroll through your ballot. So that is now a physical limitation of the machine,” he pointed out.
Flores said that his company intends to participate in the bidding for the Comelec’s “various services”. Among the services up for bidding are warehouse leasing, technical support personnel, ballots and ballot boxes, materials deployment, and electronic transmission services.
Angie M. Rosales