Don’t tweak server’s script during a count

WE CANNOT blame vice presidential candidate Sen. Bongbong Marcos for raising the possibility of his votes having been tampered with when the script of the transparency server tabulating the election scores was revised last Wednesday.

But if Senator Marcos is not filing a formal complaint on the matter, it might be best for everybody to wait for the national canvassing of the votes for the president and the vice president set to open on May 25 at the Batasang Pambansa.

Until yesterday nobody has complained of election returns from any precinct in the country or abroad having been affected when the server script was tweaked to correct the appearance of the letter “ñ” as “?” in the server’s reports. (The name “Osmeña,” for example, was appearing as “Osme?a” until the correction was made.)

The correction did not affect the tabulated votes, according to the Commission on Elections and several citizens’ watchdog groups monitoring the transparency server’s ongoing tally at the Pope Pius XII Center on United Nations Ave., Manila. The correction was reportedly done in full view of those present.

By himself and his password, the technical manager of Smartmatic (which sold the Vote Counting Machines and provides technical services to the Comelec) could not have opened the system, because he had to also secure the use of the second password from the Comelec.

The two technical officers who wielded the two different passwords were identified as Marlon Garcia, Smartmatic’s project manager, and Rouie J. Peñalba, Comelec’s IT Officer II assigned to oversee the operations of the transparency server.

The Comelec still has to determine if at his level Peñalba acted within his authority in allowing the use of the poll body’s password for a chore that Comelec chair Andres Bautista had described as merely “cosmetic.”

If there was any violation of law or rules, are password-holders Garcia and Peñalba both liable since their opening of the server to correct the script was a coordinated and consensual act?

• Learn from mistakes of past elections

ALTHOUGH the incident raised a howl among partisan and critical sectors, it did not appear to have resulted in the fudging of the unofficial election results. Still, the incident could be the springboard for further refining the automated elections system.

It has been a source of wonder why with all the glaring mistakes, and deliberate misuse, of the automated election system in the 2010 and the 2013 elections, the Comelec has been unable to learn the obvious lessons fast enough.

To help clean and improve the system, Senator Marcos and other candidates may want to file formal complaints, if warranted, and/or propose remedial legislation.

The wide-awake IT community that has been watching goings-on is understandably agitated. It was unseemly that the system that had cost taxpayers billions would be opened for adjustments while the counting was in progress.

The automated system, once turned on, should be trouble-free from start to finish.

It should not be clumsily interrupted by this “oops, teka muna” incident, especially while the decisive final votes of Senator Marcos and his rival Rep. Leni Robredo were coming in too close to each other.

The Comelec and Smartmatic should have been more circumspect and more respectful not only of the protocols but also of the sensibilities of the candidates and their followers, before proceeding to tweak the script in midstream.

• Jurassic canvass bugs automated process

WE HAVE long pointed out what we thought was a vulnerable aspect of the automated election system that still involves the physical transporting of SD (secure digital) memory cards containing the vote count and other details for every poll precinct.

The transmission of the election results from the 92,509 clustered precincts to the higher (municipal, city, provincial, national) levels is still being done through two parallel lines, one official and another unofficial.

The transparency server, whose script (a sequence of instructions of what it is to do) has been tweaked, is the unofficial route. It was put up in the spirit of transparency to keep the news media, political parties and the public promptly informed of the vote count in real time.

Being fully electronic, this unofficial line is fast and credible enough, capable of reporting the nationwide results within two days of the closing of the voting – that is if every step going up from the precincts works normally.

The other line, which is the official one, involves/includes the physical hand-carrying of the precious SD cards extracted from the VCMs in the precincts to the municipal, city and provincial boards of canvassers that will process the data using laptops (yes, laptops that we were told were supplied by Smartmatic).

From the provincial boards of canvassers, the whole caboodle will continue to be physically delivered to the Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers starting May 25.

While this other route is official, it is obviously much slower and fraught with security risks that threaten the integrity of the entire electoral process. Fears have been expressed, for instance, that there could be switching of SD cards with fake ones with pre-programmed election results.

Whatever the risks, it will be through this antiquated official route that the sensitive election documents will be relayed from the precincts all the way up to the National Board of Canvassers, which will determine and proclaim who had won as president, vice president and senators in a tedious process that will take weeks.

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