“It should be made clear that Comelec has made conscious and deliberate decisions to eliminate all the ways whereby the public and independent observers might collect such hard evidence of election rigging. As part of its flawed implementation, Comelec has disregarded standard computer security protocols and completely removed the required system safeguards that could have allowed citizens to verify their votes, validate the count, and ensure the integrity of election results. In blatant violation of our own election laws, Comelec has: • NOT MADE THE PCOS PROGRAM SOURCE CODE AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC REVIEW TO ALLOW INDEPENDENT OBSERVERS TO CHECK THAT THERE ARE NO MALICIOUS LINES OF CODE THAT INSTRUCT THE COMPUTER TO ADD VOTES TO SOME CANDIDATES AND DEDUCT VOTES FROM OTHERS; • JUNKED THE USE OF DIGITAL SIGNATURES THAT WILL PERMIT THE AUTHENTICATION OF THE ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSIONS OF PRECINCT RESULTS; • USED COMPACT FLASH CARDS (MEMORY DEVICES) THAT CAN BE OVER-WRITTEN TO EASILY CHANGE PRECINCT RESULTS; • ALLOWED A NON-SPECIFICATION OPEN CONSOLE PORT ON THE PCOS VOTING AND COUNTING MACHINE THAT PERMITS INSTANT ACCESS TO THE MACHINE’S BRAIN; • BUNGLED THE EXECUTION OF A SUPPOSEDLY “RANDOM” MANUAL AUDIT AND INEXPLICABLY TOOK OVER TWO MONTHS TO RELEASE ITS RESULTS; AND • NOT PROPERLY SECURED BOTH THE MACHINES AND THE MEMORY DEVICES FROM SURREPTITIOUS ACCESS. TO REPEAT, COMELEC’S ACTIONS CONSTITUTE GROSS -- AND BRAZEN -- VIOLATIONS OF OUR AUTOMATED ELECTIONS LAW AND OUR ELECTION CODE. Notwithstanding the barriers deliberately erected by Comelec to shield what its machines were doing from the public’s eyes and make it virtually impossible for candidates and voters to obtain “hard evidence” to prove poll rigging, such hard evidence has been found in the relatively few instances when circumstances and court orders actually made it possible to open the ballot boxes and compare the machine count with an examination of the physical ballots. Hard evidence of electronic tampering could also be seen when it was possible to examine the logs of the electronic transmission of results from the precinct counting machines to the central canvassing servers... It should be noted that the evidence cited -- there are a few more -- has been obtained in spite of the aforementioned obstacles created by Comelec to prevent the gathering of such evidence of poll manipulation. If Comelec did not only deliberately remove all the mechanisms whereby the public and independent observers can verify, validate and authenticate election results, there would doubtless be a greater preponderance of evidence of election rigging. THE PROBLEMS INTRINSIC TO AN AUTOMATED ELECTION LIE IN THE PROCEDURES AND PROTOCOLS FOLLOWED IN ITS IMPLEMENTATION: THESE MUST INCORPORATE MECHANISMS THAT ALLOW THE POLLS TO BE TRANSPARENT TO OBSERVERS AND THE PUBLIC AT LARGE. WITHOUT SUCH MECHANISMS THAT PROVIDE TRANSPARENCY, AN AUTOMATED ELECTION MUST BE DEEMED ILLEGITIMATE, INVALID AND UNDEMOCRATIC.”
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 10:51:35 +0000