Category: elections

why teddy

… it is ideology that allows Teddy to have a clear sense of a framework for nation, one that allows him to actually run on a platform. And when I say that, I mean that there is an answer to problems, there are clear solutions to the crises upon crises that this nation faces. When I say ideological, I mean that his is a platform that doesn’t talk about national issues as if these are disparate from each other; instead it reminds us about how everything is connected and how fundamental change has to mean working with these connections, working on the idea of systemic change. 

automated garci

… all the hard work of the candidates and their supporters can be negated by what Information Technology people call the Automated Garci — or the automated dagdag-bawas operation. How dagdag-bawas operations can be pulled off with the automated electoral system in place is discussed by several IT experts of the volunteer group AES Watch in the newly published book Was your vote counted.

Rene Azurin says automated cheating can be accomplished wholesale by introducing subtly altered software code into the voting machine or onto its memory card before the opening polls on election day. This can be done by those who have access to the machines or to the memory cards. According to him, cheating can also be done during the data transmission and consolidation stage if the cheater has access to the private (digital) keys of selected officials.

Many of those machines and CF cards are sent by ordinary public transportation to remote polling places, some up in the mountains, others in distant islands, days before election day. Access to them during transport and at the polling places is easy. Electronic transmission facilities in those remote places are inadequate if not absent.

Gus Lagman says the Smartmatic PCOS can be hijacked. Sixty of these machines were found in the house of a Smartmatic technician right after the elections. In 2010 PCOS machines had an open port. Through an open port a techie with a laptop can connect to the unit and tamper with the software and the CF cards in the machine. CF cards can be stolen easily as proven by the discovery of CF cards in a garbage dump in Cagayan de Oro City. Transmission of precinct election results from remote places to the canvassing machine is vulnerable to tampering as shown by Glenn Chong in Biliran in 2010.

Both Azurin and Lagman say that the Smartmatic system is very vulnerable to internal tampering. For the right incentive, a Comelec official can manipulate the system as to guarantee the election of a paying candidate. That is why their colleagues in the IT circle refer to the automated electoral system as Automated Garci.

A “Hello, Brilly. Hello, Brilly, can you…” call is out of the question. Comelec Chair Brillantes is a trustworthy man. He himself said he is trusted by President Aquino and Vice-President Binay. Besides, he is no IT man. In fact, his staunch defense of Smartmatic’s system with all its flaws shows he is an ignoramus when it comes to IT.

But many of Garci’s accomplices in 2004 remain with the Comelec. There could be techies among them. Members of the Bids and Awards Committee of Comelec that approved the purchase of ballot secrecy folders for the fantastic unit price of 380 are still with the Comelec. Yes, men and women of dubious integrity populate that Constitutional body.

…until May 21 then, by which time the results of the senatorial race shall have become final. Then either I say, “I told you so” or I eat my words.

that’s from oscar lagman jr.’s The final surge.   read too jarius bondoc’s Clean,credible election: Does Brillantes care?  federico pascual’s Source code review vital to poll integrity, jose sison’s Cloud of doubt, inquirer editorial More than legality, and dr. florangel rosario braid’s Automated elections: issues and concerns.

and so this makes sense: Poll cheating laid out: LP, UNA accuse each other of plotting

i’ve been wondering why voters and candidates and the church don’t seem the least bit concerned that brillantes has failed us, cheating hasn’t been ruled out.  is all the technical talk over their heads?  or can it be that because it’s all okay with the prez, then it must be all a-okay?  or maybe it’s not really, but it’s too late to call off elections, bahala na si batman?  argh.

the world is watching, of course.  and as usual, we’re good for a laugh or two.

surveys and the filipino elite

after reading randy david’s  Surveys and public opinion, i googled for more and found that, while it is conceded that election polls can influence voters in different ways:

The bandwagon effect, when voters rally to the leading candidate;
The underdog effect, when voters rally to the trailing candidate;
The demotivating effect, when voters decide not to vote because their candidate is already sure to win;
The motivating effect, when voters go to the precincts because the polls alerted them to the election; or
The free-will effect when voters cast their votes to prove the polls wrong.

and that, while even congress passed the Fair Election Act in february 2001, providing that

5.4. Surveys affecting national candidates shall not be published fifteen (15) days before an election and surveys affecting local candidates shall not be published seven (7) days before an election.

surprise, surprise, the davide supreme court ruled in may 2001 that

§5.4 is invalid because (1) it imposes a prior restraint on the freedom of expression, (2) it is a direct and total suppression of a category of expression even though such suppression is only for a limited period, and (3) the governmental interest sought to be promoted can be achieved by means other than suppression of freedom of expression.

googled some more and stumbled on this find: The Politics of “Public Opinion” in the Philippines (2010) by Eva Lotte E. Hedman, research fellow, London School of Economics.  excerpts [bolds mine]:

Since the restoration of formal democratic institutions and practices in 1986 … the Philippines has seen a more gradual and limited transformation in the mobilisation of voters. This change is inextricably linked with the increasing circulation in Philippine politics and society of what is commonly referred to as “public opinion.” As argued in this paper, the sheer accumulation and anticipation of surveys, reflecting back to the (disaggregated) public their (aggregated) opinion, have become inextricably linked to dynamics of bandwagoning, as well as to efforts at what scholars have described as “political branding” (Pasotti 2009). [Journal Of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 29(4), 97-118. 101. Retrieved April 8, 2013.

… “public opinion” has gained greater circulation as political discourse and social fact in Philippine politics and society, with the popularity and poll ratings of candidates – rather than the construction and maintenance of machines – viewed as an increasingly effective and decisive mode of voter mobilisation. This trend is perhaps most evident in the close correspondence between pre-election surveys and the performance of presidential contenders at the polls in the 2010 elections. However, the rise of public opinion has also come to influence the process of election campaigning itself, as seen in the floating and junking of candidates, the party-switching of politicians, and the unravelling of coalitions, all developments noted by informed observers of the presidential elections of May 2010.[103-104]

Indeed, in the wider context of multiple parties and candidates for office without political platforms or programmes of any real distinction, the apparition of an opinionated public in survey after survey is worthy of note as a phenomenon in its own right. That is, aside from the specific content of any one survey, public opinion polling has emerged as an institutionalised practice in the Philippines, an established social fact. As already noted, the sheer increase in surveys is ample testimony to this reality (Chua 2004). Beyond the increasing number and frequency of surveys, moreover, there is mounting evidence of considerable media interest in and political controversy over the “reported findings” of surveys, focused on the facts and figures of specific polls, but also, importantly, on the very claims to professional objectivity and scientific method that lie at the heart of the production of public opinion for public consumption. As the accumulation and anticipation of surveys have achieved both momentum and continuous reproduction and circulation, the significance of public opinion as such thus extends well beyond the (instrumental) uses and abuses of surveys to encompass (structural) effects of a different order in Philippine politics and society. [105-106]

Beyond the focus on technical problems and solutions associated with polling, or the attempts at restricting the practice itself, the rise of “public opinion,” as a phenomenon in its own right, appears in a very different light, as do its purported effects, when viewed through the critical lens of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and others writing in a similar vein. As argued by Bourdieu more than thirty years ago, “public opinion” is “a pure and simple artefact whose function is to dissimulate the fact that the state of the opinion at a given moment is a system of forces, of tensions” (Bourdieu 1979). Polls and surveys, it has been argued, are thus instruments “not of political knowledge but of political action,” whose deployment inherently devalues other forms of collective action – strikes, protests, social movements – and rests on a “formally equalitarian aggregative logic” that ignores and obscures the profound realities of deprivation, poverty, and social inequality in countries such as the Philippines (Wacquant 2004; Champagne 1990). [110-111]

Viewed from this perspective, the rise of public opinion can be more readily seen to have coincided, at the outset, with the emergence of a new form of political action in the Philippines. This new political activism was directed, not merely at Marcos’ ailing dictatorship, but also, importantly, against the labour strikes, student protests and peasant movements that surfaced in the factories, the campuses, and the haciendas of the country, precisely at a time when the Communist Party of the Philippines, and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, emerged the single largest such organisation (in opposition, not in control, of state power) anywhere in the world. Long before the institutionalisation of “public opinion” through polls and surveys after the resurrection of democracy, it was this struggle for “hearts and minds” that unleashed the “will of the people” into Philippine political discourse, as seen in the high-profile campaigns to collect one million signatures on a petition for Cory Aquino to run for president in 1985, to organise as many volunteers for Namfrel (National Movement for Free Elections) in 1985-86, and, finally, to oust an authoritarian regime by means of People Power in February 1986.[110-111]

At first glance, it may appear that the funeral corteges and petition drives which helped to jump-start the presidential campaigns of two generations of Aquinos, a full quarter-century apart, remain a thing apart from the rise of public opinion as political discourse. Indeed, in the case of “Cory”, the public spectacle that propelled her into popular consciousness coincided with the first appearance of the Philippines’ foremost polling institution, the Social Weather Station (SWS) in 1985 and thus pre-dated the wider circulation of public opinion as political discourse under post-Marcos conditions of democratic elections. By contrast, public opinion surveys had already become firmly established aspects of Philippine election campaigns by 2010, when Noynoy’s successful presidential candidacy was acclaimed as something of a foundational moment and unique repertoire in the rise of public opinion in the Philippines [112]

While typically associated with progress and change, and, indeed, with “new citizens-cum-voters”, “People Power,” as an – perhaps all too – familiar repertoire of protest, may also have emerged as part of the obstacles to further democratization in the Philippines.

As for the new forms of voter mobilisation themselves, the May 2010 presidential victory of Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III also signals the limited transformative potential associated with the politics of “public opinion”.

Unsurprisingly, the nature of such change reflects, in key respects, broader patterns in Philippine politics, as shown above. However, the limits to the transformative potential of “public opinion” also stem from the very deployment of polls and surveys, with their formally equalitarian aggregative logic, and concomitant devaluation of other forms of collective action and solidarities. “When used as a gauge of ‘public opinion’ […] polls not only miss the mark but shift the target,” and, thus, it has been argued, “offer at best a naïve and narrow view of democracy” (Salmon and Glasser 1995: 449). In the context of the Philippines, this shifting of the target and narrowing of the view of democracy first came into its own during the widespread popular mobilisation surrounding the rise of the first Aquino presidency. With a second Aquino elected president of the country, “public opinion” may have emerged as social fact in Philippine politics and society, but for all the countless quality of life surveys and political polls conducted in the past quarter-century on a pluralistic one-person, one-vote basis, it is difficult to dismiss the charge levelled by critics that the practice of polling serves to obscure profound realities of deprivation, poverty, and social inequality in the country today. [115]

so there.  in effect the fiipino elite has managed to appropriate, co-opt, and spin “public opinion” and “people power” to serve only its interests.  political dynasties forever.   ironic, no, wicked, that it’s under cover of “freedom of expression.”

maybe we should just boycott elections, as in jose saramago’s Seeing (2007), where government held elections and nobody came.  maybe then the ruling elite will finally get the message: tama na, sobra na, palitan na ang bulok na sistema!

praning about PCOS

praning, that  is, paranoid, about those blasted PCOS machines for the 2013, maybe also the 2016? elections.  my beef in 2010 was that there were no manual counts done in random towns / provinces/ regions to prove without a doubt that the machines were counting and relaying real votes.  and of course there was all the talk from credible, and very concerned, IT people about 236 glitches, weaknesses, defects, flaws.  236!  here’s ex-comelec commissioner augusto “gus” lagman:

[Lagman] noted that when he was still with Comelec, the poll body opted to sign anew a deal with Smartmatic even if the latter had failed to address a lot of errors in the machines.

He said when he joined Comelec, the PCOS machines had “236 problems.”

“But these problems have not been addressed, and yet Comelec proceeded to enter into the deal,” he added.

He asked: “Are we going to count on Smartmatic’s word that these will be addressed?”

Lagman, an IT expert, believes that the machines can be hacked. The petitioners before the SC believe that this could eventually lead to widespread cheating.

says butch del castillo in Those cursed PCOS machines

During the High Court’s hearing on the petitions early this month, former Commissioner Lagman (who was called by the High Court to express his dissenting views) said Comelec’s approval of the purchase came long after its option to purchase had expired. Lagman said Comelec should not have renewed Smartmatic’s contract “because the technical glitches in the PCOS machines were not addressed.”

“Proof of the problems is that they were trying to repair it, an admission that the problems existed,” he said.

Lagman described the whole network of PCOS machines as “very vulnerable to tampering.”

He said, “it does not have enough security features and has no digital signatures, which were supposed to be given by election inspectors rather than the machine.”

Lagman also pointed out that the Smartmatic system “had no mechanism to check the authenticity of the ballots and votes supposedly shown.”

Lagman’s views on the fatal defects of the PCOS machines were similar to the findings of the Philippine Computer Society and other concerned entities that organized themselves into a watchdog group called Tanggulang Demokrasya or Tan Dem.

okay, so the supreme court summoned the IT expert ex-commissioner lagman pala and listened naman to his objections re the use of smartmatic’s PCOS machines sa 2013.  and yet the supreme court has nothing to say about these objections.  the problem, i suppose, is that the four separate complaints questioned only the legality of the contract signed last march by smartmatic and comelec, and did not raise the lack of security features, the vulnerability to tampering, atbp.  bakit?  they were so sure that there was no way the court would find the contract legal?  that wasn’t very bright of them.

The court said the contract was still valid and existing because the performance security bond posted by Smartmatic-TIM was not yet returned.

The bond was in the form of a letter of credit worth P360 million or 5 percent of the original P7.2-billion poll automation contract for the May 2010 polls.

The bond was meant to fund penalties for non-performance or should Smartmatic-TIM fail to deliver the equipment based on contract schedules.

“That was one expressly stated in the contract, that return of the performance bond will terminate the contract,” (sc spokeslady) Guerra said.

“The court found that the main contract for the automated election system between the Comelec and Smartmatic–containing an option to purchase–was still existing when Smartmatic extended the period and when the Comelec exercised said option,” she said.

and now that it’s a go, biglang Chiz has no more doubts about PCOS.

Escudero said he also used to have doubts about the PCOS machines, but that Comelec statistics on electoral protests after the 2010 polls show the machines work.

“Lahat ng recount nila so far, kung ano ang nabilang ng PCOS at resulta ng halalan, ‘yon pa rin ang eksaktong lumabas. Sa katunayan, ayon sa Comelec, wala pa raw protestang nananalo tungkol sa maling bilang ng PCOS sa lokal na mga laban,” he said.

really?  can we see these comelec reports too?  and when did comelec come up with these statistics on electoral protests — before or after gus lagman was removed?

The Palace decision not to re-appoint Augusto “Gus” Lagman to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is regrettable, particularly for a government that claims to be championing reform. Last week, a Cabinet official informed Lagman that his appointment as commissioner was rejected outright by the Commission on Appointments. He was not even given the benefit of appearing before that body. The Cabinet official explained that the Palace wanted to spare Lagman from grief and possibly a confrontation with members of the appointments commission – or at least one powerful member, supposedly Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. Had he been re-appointed, though, Lagman would have welcomed the opportunity to face Enrile or whoever and to explain in a public forum whatever issue might be raised against him. We would have wanted to see that, too. Unfortunately, Lagman will never have that chance.

“supposedly,” enrile himself?  googled it and found this report of march 23, just a week before corona was convicted — peaking nuon ang presiding senator judge.

Brillantes found an ally in Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who challenged critics to identify elected officials presently occupying government posts who benefited from alleged glitches in the automated voting.

“Of course, any technician can find something to criticize. But I’m talking about the result of the last election. If you can prove to us that there are people sitting now, exercising power, who were the product of cheating during the last election, then maybe we are open [to changing the system],” Enrile told complainants at the hearing of the committee on electoral reforms.

“If we say there’s cheating with PCOS, are we also saying that the victory of President Aquino involved cheating? I think that’s impossible. Even in the case of (Vice President Jejomar) Binay, there was no cheating,” Enrile said in Filipino, noting that he had presided over the canvassing of votes of president and vice president in the 2010 elections.

ganoon?  alam ba yan ni mar roxas ?  well, enrile’s son is with binay’s una party, no? which makes it even more interesting that one of the solons now daring smartmatic and comelec to bare PCOS’ errors and repairs is jack enrile.

… a day after the high court upheld the validity of the P1.8-billion contract of the Comelec with Smartmatic-TIM for the purchase of 82,000 PCOS for use in the 2013 elections, two lawmakers from the House of Representatives on Thursday expressed their apprehensions over certain alleged security defects that make the machines vulnerable to tampering.

Cagayan Rep. Jack Enrile said the Comelec must categorically address technical concerns aired by one of its former commissioners that the PCOS machines used to automate the May 2010 elections remain vulnerable to tampering.

Enrile said that “even if the high court upholds the Comelec’s decision to use PCOS machines in 2013, election officials are still hard-pressed to shed light on allegations by one of their former colleagues that the machines remain vulnerable to tampering and do not have enough security features.”

He said the poll body must clearly demonstrate to the public that the technical glitches have already been corrected.

He urged the Comelec to make a voluntary demonstration of the new PCOS machines’ features and operation and open the technology to scrutiny by independent IT experts.

Enrile had earlier called on the Comelec to make the PCOS machines available for pre-testing by interested parties even for a limited time, saying this will allow independent groups to identify possible glitches and provide feedback on how to further improve the system.

“The only way to see if the technical glitches in the PCOS machines have been corrected and that security features have been improved is to allow for an actual and thorough examination by independent IT experts on this technology,” he stressed.

“This would assuage public fears that results of the elections could be manipulated if Comelec pushes through with the use of the PCOS machines in the 2013 mid-term elections. The Comelec needs to convince the voting public that results of the elections will be credible and that their voice will be counted come election day,” he said.

“The Supreme Court should also look deeper into Lagman’s allegations and make an independent determination on the veracity of these concerns,” Enrile added.

so father and son don’t agree on PCOS?  o nagda-drama lang sila, nagpapalabas, kumbaga?

Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, vice chairman of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms, said the Supreme Court should have gone beyond the validity of the Comelec’s deal to examine Smartmatic’s capacity to comply with the contract.

“Why should we entrust our votes to a company that failed to comply with its own security measures and contract in the 2010 elections?” Colmenares said.

“Had the votes in the 2010 presidential elections been close, there would have been serious turmoil in the country due to the lack of transparency.’’

jojo robles may be right.  it would seem that the complainants underestimated the powers of presidential wishes in these post-corona times.

It is no secret that Aquino, who was installed by Smartmatic’s PCOS machines, was wholly in favor of allowing the subcontractor to continue its work in next year’s midterm elections. Aquino’s push for the renewal of Smartmatic’s contract was a radical turnaround from his original position, however, that a new election automation provider must be found through a new bidding.

Comelec, under the leadership of Aquino appointee Sixto Brillantes, has never hidden its desire to continue using Smartmatic as its automation provider despite the protests lodged before it and, later on, before the Supreme Court. Last April, the high court led by Chief Justice Renato Corona, who had already been impeached and was then being tried in the Senate, issued restraining orders on Comelec to stop it from continuing to honor its contract with Smartmatic and from purchasing the PCOS machines.

googled the part about the prez previously saying that a new election automation provider must be found through a new bidding.  found nothing.  but found this, circa jan 2011:

The President said he was also in search of a commissioner who is knowledgeable in the field of information technology because of the automation of the country?s elections.

“We have the opportunity to really transform our electoral process through the selection of these people,” he said.

then why did he let lagman go? read this: Just how low can he get.

i wish none of the above were true.  i wish we could be convinced that the PCOS machines are now working perfectly and cheating would be impossible in 2013.  but it’s just too much of a stretch.  better praning than sorry.

*

read too del castillo’s Horror stories about PCOS machines and elinonapigkit’s Post Analysis of Cheating in the Automated Counting and Transmission of Votes of the May 10, 2010 Election.