Exclusive

By Raissa Robles

The Smartmatic website and official results of our 2010  elections have suddenly vanished from the World Wide Web while we weren’t looking.

Since Friday, I have been looking for www.smartmatic.com and could not access it on the Internet. It was as if it never existed. (I wonder if the telegenic Cesar Flores is still in the country.)

I also tried accessing the results of our recent 2010 elections from the website wwww.ibanangayon.ph

This website is still up.

Ibanangayon.ph website

But when I clicked on the box (shown below) to access the election results down to the precinct level, all I got was a message saying “problem loading page.”

I clicked on this box in the website ibanangayon.ph to view election results and got an error message

I remembered  I could also access the election results through the Commission on Elections website. But when I clicked on electionresults.comelec.gov.ph – through a link provided by Smartmatic – again there was nothing.

So I called a friend, Gerry Kaimo, to ask him to do the same thing. And he came up with the same results: The Smartmatic company website was down and our election results have been wiped clean from the Web.

An hour ago, Ederic Penaflor Eder, editor for Yahoo! Philippines, tweeted me after I had asked him to try to access Smartmatic.com and our election results. Ederic said:

Smartmatic.com is working, but electionresults.comelec.gov.ph and electionresults.ibanangayon.ph are giving me “connection timed out” error.

I  asked him to recheck because Smartmatic.com was giving me a timed out error.

Minutes later, Ederic tweeted back:

Sure. Hmm, I signed out of VPN and now, all sites are giving me “connection timed out” error on Firefox. Weird. Let’s ask Kuya @cesarfz?

I hope Ederic can get through Cesar Flores.

Personally, I am deeply disturbed by this. I had rejoiced to be able to see election results from the national  all the way down to the precinct level for the first time.

What are the implications of this on the dozens of electoral protests that have been filed, including the one that Senator Mar Roxas is about to file against Vice-President Jejomar Binay? Remember that  Cesar Flores once  said – any election fraud leaves a digital trail.

Where’s the digital trail now?

Does the Comelec and the PPCRV have its own copy of the official elections results down to the precinct level or were they relying all along on ibanangayon.ph? I hope not.

Was Smartmatic deeply offended by President Benigno Aquino’s snub of Ms. Transparency and by Congressman Teddy Boy Locsin’s perorations against the company and its officials?

I hope this is not its retaliation.

I hope this teaches us that we cannot outsource our democratic exercise to a foreign corporation.

Let’s make our own automated election system. We have three years to do it.

There’s one possible way to test the accuracy of the automated voting, at least for the national positions.

We could make the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines count the votes cast so far in Hong Kong and even in Singapore. At the same time, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will do a manual count of the same votes.

Comelec can also do something to make voters put some trust in those PCOS machines: Order Smartmatic to enable the PCOS to issue every voter a “receipt” so each voter can check immediately afterward if the machine recorded the votes correctly. The receipts are not to be taken home or be shown to the vote buyers, as what Comelec spokesman James Jimenez warned would happen.

And Smartmatic, please explain why your explanation for the recent fiasco does not jive with the proof I have below.

Voters have no way of knowing their votes were counted

The problem with this election is that at the precinct level, there is no way that voters will know their votes were counted. All we voters will get is a “Congratulations” message on the screen of the PCOS machine and that’s it. After the polls close down, there is no manual counting of the votes – a practice that has been in place since this Republic was born.

Jimenez recently shot down Ted Failon and Pinky Webb’s proposal over DZMM to have the PCOS issue a “receipt” to voters just like the way banks issue one after a deposit or withdrawal, or supermarkets issue one after payment is made.

Jimenez said:

This is not a bank. So the analogy is very wrong. Pag nagbagsak ka ba ng balota mo sa ballot box may resibo ka ba? (When you drop a ballot in a ballot box are you issued a receipt?) As a security feature, it doesn’t do anything. It will probably satisfy you personally. It is not even a very good psychological comfort for you because it was very easy to fool. It was very easy to fake.

For instance, he said,

Bibigyan ko instructon ang makina – but still count the wrong ballot. In the end nadaya ka rin.(I could give an instruction to the machine to show your votes correctly but still count your ballot wrong. In the end, you would be cheated.)

I told former Comelec chairman Christian Monsod this explanation by Jimenez. Why Monsod, you’d probably ask. Because among all the Comelec chairmen I’ve covered since Leonardo Perez (the one who rigged the 1986 snap election of dictator Ferdinand Marcos), I find Monsod the most credible since he came out financially poorer from the stint.

Anyway, Monsod told me in his usual blunt way:

Don’t listen to James. On that issue, I think that’s a poor excuse. Sometimes James Jimenez goes off in tangent on these issues inventing excuses. And that’s a poor one.

That’s why former poll chair Christian Monsod also wants a “receipt”

Monsod explained it was actually part of our automation law to have a “voter verified precinct paper audit trail (VVPPAT).” In short, the same receipt that Jimenez said should not be done. Monsod told me:

That is not going to be done although that’s in the law.The original plan was for voters to look at it (the “receipt”) and put it in a separate box before they leave the precinct. That was never intended to bring out.

Monsod explained that the “receipt” was intended to be used in the random manual counting when the polls close down.

He added:

The real reason (they don’t want to issue the receipt is) they would have to configure the manufacturing of the equipment. It costs a lot of money to do it.

Isn’t that what they are doing right now because of their stupid mistake with the ballots and the CF (Compact Flash) cards? If it’s their mistake, it’s ok to spend our money. If it’s what civilians ask for, it can’t be done. That’s the attitude of Comelec and Smartmatic so far.

I told Monsod that the Comelec today reminds me of the Comelec under Leonardo Perez.

I also told Monsod that (issuing “receipts”) is precisely what Smartmatic did in Venezuela when it introduced automated voting in 2006. The Wikipedia entry on the electoral exercise said :

After the vote is cast, each machine prints out a paper ballot, or VVPAT, which is inspected by the voter and deposited in a ballot box belonging to the machine’s table.

Later, these paper ballots were tallied in a random manual audit.

Why can’t we do the same here? Do a random but comprehensive parallel manual audit this way because we can assume that whatever is tallied by the PCOS are all reflected in those “receipts.”

The “receipts” in turn have been VERIFIED by the voter himself right after casting his vote. If there’s a discrepancy between the “receipts” and the PCOS summary for that precinct, then we can rightly assume that the PCOS did not count the votes correctly in that precinct.

Again James Jimenez, didn’t Smartmatic tell Comelec that it issued such “receipts” to voters in Venezuela?

Proof that Smartmatic is not telling the whole truth about what went wrong

Smartmatic’s explanation for why their PCOS could not even do simple addition that my grade schooler son can do mentally does not wash.

Smartmatic officer Cesar Flores said in the hastily called press conference with Comelec Tuesday (May 4) that during the printing of the ballots, the spacing of the local ballot face (the back of the ballot) was adjusted to double space from single space. The single space was the formatting used for the national contests, he said.

Both Comelec and Smartmatic officials said nothing wrong was detected with the counting of votes for the national position.

Only the votes for the local position were affected and Flores’ explanation was that the change from single space to double space for the local ballot face was not included in the compact flash card. Because of this, he said the PCOS machine read the back side where candidates for the local elections were printed as if it still had a single-space format, causing the machine to wrongly allot votes to certain candidates or skip other
names.

He said:

The flash cards inside the PCOS were not able to locate certain candidates to positions. For some reason, the configuration was telling the machine that the second row visually is actually the third row.

The next row was read as a “blank space,” he said.

This explanation does not seem to jive with the reality

When Smartmatic and Comelec snubbed the Foreign Corresopndents Association of the Philippines last February, Smartmatic sent over a middle level officer named Miguel Avila to demonstrate the PCOS using their sample ballots then. Fortunately, I snapped a few photos of the ballot.

This is how the ORIGINAL BALLOT looked. Notice that the front page – where the national candidates are printed – was a mixture of single space (for president, vice-president and senators) and double space (for party-list). The  names were also printed vertically.

Smartmatic used this sample ballot in mock polls with FOCAP - Photo by Raissa Robles

This is how the back page of the ORIGINAL  BALLOT looked. Notice that the names of all the local candidates were also printed in single space and positioned vertically.

This is the back page, where local candidates' names are printed, of the sample ballot used by Smarmatic with FOCAP last February - Photo by Raissa Robles

After  Comelec’s drastic redesign, both  the FRONT AND BACK of the original ballot changed dramatically.

Last Saturday, our barangay gave out samples of the newly redesigned ballot. See below how the front page containing the names of the national candidates changed.  Notice that the names of the national candidates are  NOW ALL DOUBLE SPACE and laid out horizontally. It’s a very drastic redesign of the original ballot.

Front page of actual 2010 ballot - PHOTO by Raissa Robles

The back page containing the names of the local candidates now look like this. Notice that the names of the local candidates are now DOUBLE SPACE and laid out horizontally. Also a drastic redesign.

Back page of actual 2010 ballot showing local candidates - PHOTO BY Raissa Robles

What I would like to ask Smartmatic and Comelec is this:  Why is it that your CF cards were able to read the newly and drastically redesigned FRONT PAGE of the ballot containing the names of the national candidates, but were unable to read the BACK PAGE containing the names of the local candidates?

What are you not telling us?

Another thing that struck me during the Focap “non-briefing” – Miguel Avila gave out sample ballots to fill out and his instructions were to fill out ONLY THE FRONT PAGE, not the back page. I found that odd then.

This fiasco makes me wonder whether all this time Smartmatic and Comelec have been testing only the front page of the ballot where the national candidates are printed and NEVER the back page where the local candidates are printed.

The implications of this fiasco

I am proposing the advanced counting of the Singapore and Hong Kong votes to test the system. This would not affect the process as a whole. Whatever is counted can just be added manually to the national count later on. If you think that would create trending, think of the more serious implications of the current situation.

The ENTIRE PROCESS of the automated polls has now become suspect and questionable. Smartmatic claims only the votes for the local candidates were scrambled. But Nacionalista Party sokesman Gilbert Remulla made serious allegations Tuesday (May 4) that in one instance of testing, votes for NP presidential candidate Manuel Villar disappeared.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Remulla showed reporters a tally sheet from a PCOS machine and a parallel manual count:

There were five votes for Villar, five votes for Aquino, but when it came out (in the machine), there were no votes for Villar, no votes for Noynoy and 10 votes for Teodoro. Is this automated cheating?

You know what this means?, my hubby Alan told me at the breakfast table. He said this lays the basis for an election protest that could hold up the proclamation of the new president. I agreed.

He nudged me to write this on my blog, which is why I’m writing this. That the victory of whoever wins, based on the automated polls, could be forever marred by this. And then we will again have six years of a presidency with a questionable mandate from the people.

That’s too high a price to pay which I for one am not willing to pay. If that happens, I will add my voice to that of retired military chief Angelo Reyes who raged during Comelec and Smartmatic’s presscon that those responsible should be “hanged”. Not only hanged, I say, but drawn and quartered the medieval way.

There’s a very easy, painless, legal way to avoid a dangerous power vacuum in case a new President is not proclaimed by June 30 – the same day the tenures of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Vice-President Noli de Castro, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Prospero Nograles all lapse.

This is by electing a new Senate President between May 31 and June 4, 2010 when Congress officially resumes its sessions. If you want to see the Senate calendar, click on this link.

This morning, before I uploaded this entry, I heard University of the Philippines College of Law dean, Marvic Leonen, express the same legal opinion on radio.

I base mine on what I learned while covering the Senate as a beat reporter.

The Constitution specifies that the Senate President should serve as the acting President “until the President or Vice-President shall have been elected and qualified.”

In the Senate President’s absence or incapacity, the House Speaker takes over. But that would be impossible after June 30 since all congressmen would also be out of office by then.

However, 12 senators would still be in office beyond June 30. In fact, their tenures would only expire in the year 2013. That was how the Constitution designed it in order to avoid a vacuum.

Unfortunately, the incumbent Senate President Enrile is not one of those senators. He will also be out of office by June 30, which is why he is running again.

Let’s examine the 12 senators who will remain beyond June 30 and see how acceptable they might be to their colleagues:

• Senators Benigno Aquino III and Manuel Villar are both running for President.
• Senator Loren Legarda is Villar’s running mate.
• Senator Alan Cayetano is aligned with Villar.
• Senator Francis Pangilinan is aligned with Aquino.
• Senator Joke Arroyo is aligned with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who is suspected of angling to stay on in office.
• Senator Edgardo Angara is also aligned with Pres. Arroyo.
• Senator Miguel Zubiri is also aligned with Pres. Arroyo and suspected of electoral cheating by veteran Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
• Senator Panfilo Lacson has gone missing because of double murder raps.
• Senator Antonio Trillanes is in jail on rebellion charges.
• And who will trust a habitual failed coup plotter like Senator Gregorio Honasan to assume the post of Acting President?

And so that leaves only Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero, a man without a political party – the man least likely to power grab for himself. A man who is credible and competent in law.

If you have a better suggestion, I would like to know.

I wasn’t going to write about poll automation just yet. I thought what President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo told the foreign press corps last Friday, January 22 was old hat, until I saw the presidential palace story on the dinner:

PGMA assures foreign media there will be no failure of election

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last night assured foreign correspondents there will be no failure of elections in May.

In a dinner she hosted for the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) at the Palace, the President said she was assured by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that it is doing its best to complete the automated poll system before May. She said all the funds necessary for holding the national elections have been disbursed.

That’s funny. I did not come away from the Palace dinner feeling reassured that the automation was going great guns.

Oliver Teves of Associated Press shakes hands with President Arroyo while I (in brown coat) look on; left foreground is FOCAP president Jim Gomez; behind Jim is Dana Batnag of Jiji Press; on right background is Zhao Jiemin of Xinhua News Agency - PHOTO courtesy of Malacanang Palace press office

In fact I felt more apprehensive because of what Mrs Arroyo told us.

When I asked her – “Maam, are you personally worried” – about the automation?

Her reply did not give comfort. First she said, “Um”, and she looked up at the ceiling. Then she said, more like talking to herself, “I’m worried. I’m worried, but I – I have to go by what the Comelec said.”

Dear readers, tell me if I’m being paranoid by reading more than what the President really told us.

Help me out here by reading for yourself what President Arroyo (GMA) said – word for word – on poll automation during our dinner . I would like to thank a colleague in FOCAP for providing me with the specific quotes reprinted below:

FOCAP MEMBER: THERE ARE CONCERNS ABOUT THE AUTOMATION PROCESS.

GMA: Ya, thats why I called a national security council meeting. Because we needed to ask Comelec.

FOCAP MEMBER: ARE WE STILL ON SCHEDULE?

GMA:Ya, that’s what the Comelec said.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT ASPECT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT, OF AUTOMATION?

GMA: Well, it’s not been tested. So we expressed the concern that everybody —

FOCAP MEMBER (ME): MAAM, ARE YOU PERSONALLY WORRIED?

GMA: Um – I’m worried. I’m worried, but I – I have to go by what the Comelec said.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT IF IT FAILS?

GMA: They said it might fail in some – some areas. But it cannot, but not nationally.

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT ABOUT THE AUTOMATION ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT?THE COUNTING,THE–

GMA: I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s just that –

FOCAP MEMBER (ME): YOU’RE UNEASY

GMA: I don’t know. Like all of you. Like all of you. It’s more –

FOCAP MEMBER: WHAT STEPS ARE YOU DOING TO AVOID A FAILURE OF ELECTIONS?

GMA: We have to support the Comelec in everything they want to do. It’s their primary responsiblity but we’re suporting them. That’s why we called a National Security Council meeting. To ask them what they would need. We’ve made the budget tthat they need available.

FOCAP MEMBER: LET’S KEEP OUR FINGERS CROSSED.

GMA: They said they’re not entertaining a failure of elections

FOCAP MEMBER: NANDON BA ANG (IS THERE A )BACKUP PLAN IF EVER?

GMA: You know I can’t be their spokesman. You have to ask them. But then they made a presentation. What about failure of elections. They said there may be some but only in isolated areas, but not nationwide.

FOCAP MEMBER: SO WHAT DID THEY SAY IN SOME ISOLATED AREAS

GMA: Same as now. It happens. So they have their mechanism. But it doesnt affect the national anymore.

FOCAP MEMBER: THEY ASSURED YOU IT WON’T BE MASSIVE FAILURE

GMA: That’s what they said. They’re not entertaining national failure of elections, maybe in some isolated areas but not nationwide.

FOCAP MEMBER: DID THEY MENTION TO YOU ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PARALLEL MANUAL COUNT?

GMA: They did not say.

FOCAP MEMBER (DANA BATNAG OF JIJI PRESS: – YOU SAID COMELEC IS NOT ENTERTAINING THE POSSIBILITY. DOES THAT MEAN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT PREPARING FOR THE POSSIBLITY OF A FAILURE OF ELECTIONS? OR ARE THERE PREPARATIONS?

GMA: As far as we are concerend, we would rather prepare to help Comelec succeed.

FOCAP MEMBER: IN CASE IT HAPPENS

GMA: You know, they said it’s not going to happen. So we take their word for it.

Since our Friday dinner, pronouncements from the Comelec have made me even warier.

Last Wednesday, Comelec Commissioner Armand Velasco told congressmen that they are prepared to do a manual count for 30% of the votes as part of their backup plan.

Do you know how big 30% is?

The registered voters now number 48,275,594 and 30% of that is 14.482 million.

That would definitely affect the outcome of the presidential polls.

Just to give you an idea, I will use some comparative figures that Ellen Tordesillas recently provided in her blog. She noted the following:

• Fidel Ramos won in 1992 with only 5,342,321 votes.
• Joseph Estrada won in 1998 with 10,722,295 votes or 31.39% of registered voters then.
• In 2004, Mrs Arroyo was credited with 12,905,808 votes or 29.64% of registered voters.

Given these trends, we should not be worried with an automation failure rate that could affect as much as 14.4 million voters?

There are other things I’m worried about. When I was listening to Wednesday’s Comelec and Smartmatic presentation before Senator Francis Escudero’s  Senate committee, I realized that the automation left very little margin for error as far as ballot distribution is concerned.

Let me explain. In all our elections,  Comelec only had to send out the number of ballots for each precinct nationwide plus a little extra for spoilage.

Now, because all the local candidates’ names from congressman down to councilor are printed at the back of each ballot, Comelec has to be very precise in delivering to every area.

In Quezon City for instance, ballots for District 1 should only go to District 1 and not anywhere else. Otherwise, the name of the candidates for congressman would be wrong. For the same reason, ballots for Quezon City cannot go to Manila since the names of the candidates for mayors and city councilors would be wrong.

For the first time, Comelec would have to practice that kind of precision especially in far-flung areas.

And some candidates could take advantage by finding ways for ballots, intended for certain areas where they are weak, to be diverted somewhere else.

From what I have seen of candidates’ behavior in previous polls, I am certain there are candidates who are even now trying to find ways to game the system for to their own advantage.

If you want to know more about what President Arroyo told FOCAP – about her hair, the grade she gave her former student Senator Noynoy Aquino, about life in the presidential  palace, etc – click on the link below:

Asking President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo about sex was   easier than asking her about politics and her feelings

Why fellow senators want Juan Ponce Enrile out of the Senate Presidency and it’s not just because of Villar’s maneuvers

It must be positively galling, delightful and astonishing for Juan Ponce Enrile to find himself once again within sniffing distance of the presidency of the Republic at the age of 86. (He shares the same birthday as Kris Aquino – on Valentines Day).

The first time Enrile was THAT CLOSE was in the twilight of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship when he, Imelda Marcos and the military chief Fabian Ver were jostling for the top post. (This explains why Enrile made that remark to ex-President Joseph Estrada’s spokeswoman Margaux Salcedo that he had to sit through hours of Imelda’s non-stop prattle during martial law. Enrile described those painful episodes as “moments of intellectual constipation,” Margaux said.

I interviewed him then for Business Day newspaper and he came across as young, virile and dangerously attractive.

But at that time, Enrile was YES MAAM’ing Imelda all over the place despite his being the defense minister and martial law administrator. It was that or off with his head.

The second time Enrile nearly stepped inside the presidential palace was in the early days of Cory Aquino’s presidency when his clone and aide, Lt. Col. Gregorio Honasan, kept trying to unseat Aquino.

Now Enrile has a chance again because the 1987 Philippine Constitution puts him directly in the line of succession for the presidency in case anything happens to the president and vice-president.

Here is the pertinent provision:

Section 8. In case of death, permanent disability, removal from office, or resignation of the President, the Vice-President shall become the President to serve the unexpired term. In case of death, permanent disability, removal from office, or resignation of both the President and Vice-President, the President of the Senate or, in case of his inability, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, shall then act as President until the President or Vice-President shall have been elected and qualified.

But the problem is, Enrile’s senatorial term and the tenure of all congressmen end also this June 30, leaving a dangerous gap in political succession in case neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President elect is chosen or qualified by June 30 this year.

The Constitution states that

Where no President and Vice-President shall have been chosen or shall have qualified, or where both shall have died or become permanently disabled, the President of the Senate or, in case of his inability, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, shall act as President until a President or a Vice-President shall have been chosen and qualified.

Because of this, it is very very urgent for the Senate to replace Enrile NOW in the next few days before Congress adjourns basically for good on February 6.

Congress only resumes sessions from May 31 to June 4 to proclaim the winning president and vice-president. If there is no winner, we are in deep sh-t indeed.

So the most cautious and patriotic thing for the Senate to do is to shower Enrile with thunderous praise and ask him to make way now for someone whose term will end in 2012.

Whom do you pick as the next Senate President among these 12 senators who still have a shelf life of three more years?

Loren Legarda
Gregorio Honasan
Francis Escudero
Benigno Aquino III
Alan Cayetano
Panfilo Lacson
Manuel Villar
Edgardo Angara
Joker Arroyo
Francis Pangilinan
Miguel Zubiri
Antonio Trillanes

Let your voices be heard…