SMARTMATIC’S NEGLIGENCE TAINTS CREDIBILITY OF AES

A curious thing was revealed during the inquiry conducted by the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms. When Smartmatic was asked why there are election returns which bear dates different from the date of the election, they responded by saying that this is a negligible error in that one can still determine the activities of the PCOS machines since the audit logs will show the time frame that it was active.

Simply put, Smartmatic is saying that as long as the audit logs show that the PCOS machine was active only during an twelve-hour period corresponding to the official voting and counting schedule of the elections, there is nothing to be concerned about the election returns having a wrong date and time stamp.

The Smartmatic official’s reply merited not only a terse but a harsh retort from an obviously irritated chairman of the committee Congressman Teddy Locsin Jr., who pointed out that the official’s answer was “ridiculous”. He observed that the erroneous dates on the ER is a breach of security for the election returns. I totally agree.

Logically, the importance of the date stamp on the election returns cannot be downplayed. It is supposed to be the proof that the ballots were read and counted on election day, May 10, 2010. In the old, manual system, the dates manually written determines whether a document is credible or not. In an automated system, it should not be any different. The machine should correctly and faithfully record date and time of the activities of the machine.

Smartmatic tried to downplay the presentation of ERs with wrong dates by saying that with more than 80,000 machines being deployed from their warehouse in Cabuyao where the dates of the machines are supposed to be programmed, there is bound to be a certain percentage which will have errors. What percentage they deem allowable and how many they have actually found to have wrong dates, they did not reveal.

To me, it is an unacceptable excuse. It speaks of poor quality control and security on their part. Setting the correct time in the internal clock of each PCOS machine is an act that should be part of standard operating procedures especially in quality control for such expensive and high-tech equipment. It is expected that it is part of their S.O.P. for the clocks to be programmed in the correct setting before the units are sent to the different jurisdictions.

What makes it really unacceptable is that the law, Republic Act 9369, commonly known as the Automated Elections Law, prescribes that the election returns “shall also show the date of the election” (Section 32). In Section 2 of the law, where terms are defined, Election Return is defined as “a document in electronic and printed form directly produced by the counting machine, showing the date of the election…”

In the election return churned out by the PCOS machine, the only space provided for the manual entry of information are spaces for the signatures of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) and the pollwatchers. There is no space for manual entry of the date because the intention is for the machine to automatically put a date and time stamp on the document, supposedly as an added measure of security against fraud.

In my own district there were seven election returns with wrong dates. I won overwhelmingly in my district, placing first among all the senatorial candidates (yes, including all the actors), and my father also won in all precincts. But I do not hesitate to question the performance of Smartmatic particularly on the issue of the wrong date/time stamps. I can perfectly understand the outburst of Cong. Teddy Locsin against the Smartmatic officials, especially since he personally pushed hard for the automated elections.

But such negligence should not be tolerated. Smartmatic should be sanctioned for this irresponsible act which now jeopardizes the credibility of the automated election system and possibly even its results. It would be unfortunate if it comes out that Smartmatic may not be smart after all.