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Did the Comelec just go rogue?

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Just my opinion

By Raïssa Robles

The Commission on Elections has just proclaimed the 12 winning senators in a most unusual way – without ranking them and without giving the number of votes each won.

It’s a first in Senate electoral history. And one intended, it seems, to stop the cheating.

Retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban branded Comelec’s action as “baseless and premature”.

Panganiban, in his opinion column Saturday at the Philippine Daily Inquirer said:

“No one was chasing the Comelec, why the indecent haste? Why rush to proclaim without legal or factual basis? Why not wait for two days, just two days, and then proclaim all 12 legally and unquestionably?”

My guess – based on my experience covering nine national and local elections starting 1986 – is that the Comelec was trying to head off cheating that would materially affect results of the 2013 senatorial elections. Especially the rankings and the winners for the 10th, 11th and 12th slots.

Politicians have told me often enough that it’s very difficult to cheat in the local elections because the guarding of votes there is mano-a-mano:Watchers of rival camps are present in all the precincts watching every move the Comelec personnel and the rival camp make.

The problem has always been guarding the integrity of the results for national positions:

The presidential and vice-presidential race

The senatorial race

And ironically enough, the partylist race because the votes here are cast nationwide.

While we have indeed automated our elections at the precinct level, the method of verifying the authenticity of votes cast; verifying the number of votes cast; and counting the votes is still an analog one and dates back to the 1940s.

Namfrel (The National Movement for Free Elections) came out with a very good diagram of the process and I am reposting it below.

Let’s just run through the election process. On election day, millions of Filipinos went to polling places – usually located in school rooms. Each classroom had a PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scanner).

Altogether, Comelec scattered throughout the country 78,166 PCOS machines. Each schoolroom with a PCOS machine is what Comelec calls a “Clustered Precinct”.

All in all, there were:

78,166 Clustered Precincts located in

1,640 cities and towns mostly located in

80 provinces (because some cities like those comprising Metro Manila) are not part of any province.

After the voting was over on May 13, 2013, each of the 78,166 Clustered Precincts printed an Election Return (ER). The ER totaled the votes for each of the candidates.

Each Election Return (ER) result was transmitted twice to two different locations. One ER was transmitted to the town or city board of canvassers. The same ER was also transmitted to what is called the “Transparency Server” of Comelec.

In turn, the “Transparency Server” transmitted the same ER results to FIVE DIFFERENT LOCATIONS:

A “Backup Server” (also Comelec controlled)

A Citizens Arm (in this case the PPCRV)

The Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (for media)

The Liberal Party Headquarters

And the UNA Headquarters

The Comelec’s “Backup Server” also transmitted the same ERs to Namfrel.

All these fast transmissions, however, are not the “official results”.

Our Election Code only recognizes as “official results” those results that undergo the following four-step process:

First, the PCOS machine has to produce an ER.

Second, the ER has to pass through and be approved by the city or municipal board of canvass.

Third, the city or municipal board of canvass then verifies and adds up the total number of votes. The board then produces a “Certificate of Canvass”

Fourth, this “Certificate of Canvass” is then transmitted electronically to the Provincial Board of Canvassers.

There are 80 Provincial Board of Canvassers in all. Each one in turn prepares a Certificate of Canvass.

In addition, 26 Chartered and Highly Urbanized Cities also prepare their own Certificates of Canvass

In addition, ONE Certificate of Canvass is prepared to summarize the local absentee votes for senatorial and party list elections

In addition, 197 separate CoCs are prepared to summarize the Overseas Absentee Votes from 197 separate countries.

For senators to be proclaimed winners, the National Board of Canvassers located in Comelec’s main Manila office has to receive the 304 CoCs – from the provinces, from highly urbanized cities and from absentee voting locally and overseas.

In elections where votes are gathered nationwide, this is the rule that has always been followed: ALL election returns from a particular town or city in a province have to be all accounted for – 100% – before a Certificate of Canvass from that province can be produced and then sent on to the national board of canvassers in Manila.

Here is Namfrel’s illustration of the poll automation process:

This is not what happened in the May 2013 elections. Comelec did not wait for the national board of canvassers to complete most of its job. Instead, the Comelec commissioners relied on what they called “group canvass reports” which is nowhere to be found in our Poll Automation Law.

However, here is the interesting thing about Republic Act 9369 or the Poll Automation Law.

It does not require Comelec to give the proclaimed senators any ranking or to disclose the number of votes each one got.

Section 22 of RA 9369 merely states:

SEC. 22. Section 23 of Republic Act No. 8436 is hereby amended to read as follows:

“SEC. 27. National Board of Canvassers for Senators and Party-List Representatives. – The chairman and members of the Commission on Election sitting en banc, shall compose the national board of canvassers for senators and party-list representatives. It shall canvass the results by consolidating the certificates of canvass electronically transmitted. Thereafter, the national board shall proclaim the winning candidates for senators and party-list representatives.”

Why did Comelec proclaim senators piecemeal?

Because, as we all saw, there were security breaches in the poll automation process.

As Namfrel noted: Within 48 hours the the process had slowed down, with 23,039 ERs still waiting to be transmitted. That translated to 29.47% of ALL ERs not transmitted.

Based on figures presented in a GMA News report, when all 12 senators were proclaimed winners, 59,665 ERs had come in or a total of 76.33% of all Election Returns. This means 23.67% of ERs had not come in yet.

What had happened to these ERs?

Namfrel listed the major breaches in the poll automation process:

A highly reliable source, quite familiar with the election process, told me that one way of cheating in an automation process seems to be to corrupt the CF Card so that a fresh CF Card would have to be placed. “Theoretically, with a new CF card, you could feed new ballots into the PCOS,” the source said.

Another way is to infiltrate the process – for instance, in the delivery of the ballots or by planting technical personnel.

Still another is to delay the process – “no one transmits” the ERs – as what happened in certain places, my source pointed out.

Poll automation has opened up new and old ways of cheating, especially for national positions.

As my hubby Alan pointed out, Filipinos are very good in finding holes in secure systems.

Can Comelec commissioners be punished for what they did?

Sure they can, but only through impeachment.

Would Congress – especially the 12 newly-proclaimed senators – take part in such an impeachment? By doing so, they would call their very election into question.

What needs to be done is to follow the random manual audit closely and to amend the poll automation law in order to speed up and secure the process further.

I also believe it is high time we develop our own poll automation system down to the source code. We can test it in the coming barangay elections. I don’t see why we can’t do it in time for 2016.  Smartmatic is just too problematic.

Comments

  1. If I am Comelec Chairman Brillantes:

    I will use the intelligence fund to pay assets to verify an intelligence report that Lagman and Monsod are conspiring to discredit the Comelec at any cost. I will also verify the report that Lagman and Monsod are in cahoots with GMA. So that I have to purchase costly information from the suspected syndicate’s insiders. I may also have to utilize costly surveillance experts and devices. Further, I will use the intelligence fund to help the family of my prospective witnesses before they are accepted in the govenment’s witness protection pogram.

    Moreover, I will use the intelligence fund to maintain and protect my intelligence agents and assets. Food, transportation and shelter are not free items in our country. Finally, I will not return the 30M intelligence fund but instead justify it by saying that most, if not all, government offices have an internal intelligence and security units for the purpose of safeguarding their personnel and documents, and preserve the integrity of the office. Maybe, I will ask also for financial augmentation later.

    • Whatever happened to Brillantes’ earlier pronouncement that he was going to expose the people behind AES Watch (the group that’s been making a lot of noise about alleged irregularities in this election)? Are Lagman and Monsod part of this group?

      I’ve had a look at the AES Watch website and all I found on the page ‘About AES Watch’ is this:

      Automated Election System (AES) Watch is a broad coalition of IT experts, NGOs, faith-based organizations and members of the academe advocating transparent elections.

      • The Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch) today dared Chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr., of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to clarify that its P30M counter-intelligence fund (CIF) was not intended to spy on IT groups and election watchdogs critical of the Comelec-purchased Smartmatic PCOS technology and the way the automated mid-term elections were conducted.

        The citizens’ watchdog issued the demand even as it asked Comelec along with the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on AES to secure all PCOS machines, CCS software, ballot boxes, and other election paraphernalia needed for auditing the now-tainted mid-term election system and subjecting it to forensics scrutiny.

        Nelson J. Celis, AES Watch spokesperson, issued the challenge following Brillantes’ own admission about the existence of the intelligence fund – after budget realignment approval by President Benigno S. Aquino III last Feb. 20. If it is true that the fund was sought – quoting Malacanang spokesperson Abigail Valte – to spy on “the activities of certain groups, individuals, and technology experts” suspected of sabotaging the elections, then all the more must Brillantes explain whether such intelligence operations are targeting AES Watch, its affiliate organizations, IT groups, other citizens groups, and anti-fraud movements that have been openly vocal against the mismanagement by Comelec of the automated elections since the beginning, Celis said.

        SOURCE: http://blogwatch.tv/2013/05/are-you-spying-on-us-aes-watch-asks-chairbrillantes/

        • Excerpt

          “Another AES Watch member, Atty Melchor Magdamo, a former Comelec legal consultant who blew the whistle on the anomalous secrecy folder deal in 2010, proposed that the “probe should begin with the question: Why were the major safeguards disregarded and removed –independent source code review, installation of the industry prescribed digital signatures, voter verification and the WORM (write-once-read many) CF cards up to the unconscionable expenses on the unbundled election paraphernalia, warehousing and the PCOS purchase itself.”

          “There should be accountability here otherwise we will be sending a wrong signal to the people and the youth of this land that to err in Comelec is just human and to forgive is divine,” Magdamo mused.”

        • Excerpts from the link provided by @Rene

          Brillantes said while Comelec monitored the “noise” of critics like AES Watch, it focused intelligence work on leads about groups or individuals with a potential “to sabotage the elections” by, among others, offering purported “sure wins” through PCOS manipulation, or subverting safeguards built into the election process.

          It will not, he said, spend intel funds just for groups like AES Watch, which has assailed Comelec’s alleged failure to follow the safeguards imposed in the poll automation law, like the source code review. “Sila, kung meron silang conspiracy para guluhin ang eleksyon [sa pag-iingay], hindi namin sila gagastusan. Ang hinahanap naming yung mga talagang magsasabotahe ng eleksyon.”

          Referring to groups like AESWatch, Brillantes asked, “Bakit sila matatakot kung wala silang ginawang masama? Talaga naming ginagamit ang intel fund sa mga nagsasabotahe ng election” or only to those out to sabotage the polls. “Kapag natatakot sila, ibig sabihin meron sila sigurong ginagawang masama.”

          He alluded to “mga taong labas, na dating nasa loob [former Comelec insiders who are now outsiders] among the noisiest critics. “They pick up some information and blow it up to get attention.”

    • Correctka dyan [email protected] ,, if ever somebody wanted to cheat last election ,using the old and new method in doing such distortion in conivance with the retired COMELEC Officials are the opposition whose senatorial candidates lagged behind the surveys at 9:3 in favor of Team PNOY….

  2. Why should there be this INTELDELIGENCIA FUNDS for the COMELEC? –

    “MANILA, Philippines — After questioning the motive of a former poll commissioner who exposed the matter, Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. admitted late Thursday that President Benigno Aquino III had given him P30 million in intelligence funds, which he intends to return.”

    Ka swerte naman nila…commissioners…what SPIES did they catch with such funds? Wala! Naka lusot ang mga spies pala!

    Grrrr…people’s money! P30 MILLION yan! I just hope they ATE A LOT OF CHOLESTEROLS on it…!

    • POINTED Questions to answer Commission on Elections, Commissioner Chair Sixto Brillantes

      “Brillantes must also answer other questions, such as: What is the Comelec going to do about the fact that Smartmatic lied to the Supreme Court, in effect saying that it had the right to grant a perpetual license to the Comelec to use the software (read source code)? Or: How is the Comelec going to justify that it paid $10 million for the source code just before the elections, when that was supposed to be part of the deal with Smartmatic?

      “And finally, how is Brillantes going to justify the confidential/intelligence funds he has been “sharing” with his Comelec commissioners? (Only Gus Lagman returned the money.)” –

      SOURCE: http://opinion.inquirer.net/53255/pointed-questions-for-the-comelec-chair

  4. More doubts raised about poll results
    IT experts note strange ‘60-30-10’ pattern

    By Jerome Aning
    Philippine Daily Inquirer
    12:00 am | Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

    Information technology (IT) experts have observed a strange “pattern” of votes obtained by administration, opposition and independent senatorial candidates in the May 13 elections.

    The IT experts have been linking with election watchdogs throughout the country to validate the so-called “60-30-10” pattern in which senatorial candidates from Team PNoy consistently obtained 60 percent, those from the United Nationalist Alliance 30 percent and the rest 10 percent of the votes cast in various precincts.

    The experts, however, are not making claims that the results were manipulated. Neither have they accused the Commission on Elections (Comelec), its automation service provider Smartmatic Corp. or any individual or group of conspiracy.

    The “60-30-10” theory was attributed to Ateneo professor Lex Muga, who studied the senatorial tallies from the first to the 16th canvass reports released by the Comelec sitting as the national board of canvassers (NBOC).

    On the average, Muga said the 12 Team PNoy candidates gained 59.12 percent, the nine UNA candidates 31.36 percent and the rest 9.7 percent.

    Interesting pattern

    “Note that the COCs (certificates of canvass) are supposed to be received randomly. But we still have an interesting pattern,” he said in a public status update on his Facebook account on Sunday.

    Muga said COCs from different provinces received by the NBOC should not generate the same pattern of votes for the three groups of candidates but should show some variation.

    In a television interview, the Ateneo professor said one possible explanation of the pattern was that the Team PNoy campaign had been so effective that its candidates practically won in every province and UNA was left without a bulwark.

    Effective campaign

    “My impression is that the campaign of Team PNoy for a 12-0 sweep nationwide was effective. I don’t know how they did it but it was effective. UNA [candidates] had no stronghold. [Their votes] were scattered,” he said.

    Blogger Conrad Miguel Gozalo (www.radarsweep.com) also published his analysis of the voting pattern, which was similar to Muga’s.

    Gozalo, however, used the senatorial votes in 11 intervals released beginning about 10 p.m. of May 13 by the news website Rappler.com, which has a mirror transparency server as the Comelec’s official media partner in the elections.

    “After seeing the outcome of our work, I was initially convinced that the allegations of a [60-30-10 pattern] were indeed true [based on] our own findings),” Gozalo said.

    He called on other IT experts to use his data to find out if there were other trends.

    Pablo Manalastas, IT consultant of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, said the 60-30-10 pattern could be proven by checking the smaller populations of voters, such as precinct and municipal results.

    “If in those results you see a 60-30-10 pattern, then there is probably a conspiracy. But if you see wild fluctuations that are attributable to differing local preferences, then there may be no conspiracy,” he said.

    Law of large numbers

    Manalastas also recalled the law of large numbers in statistics, which describes the result of performing the same experiment many times.

    According to the law, the average of the results from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

    “Our election is like some big experiment in which the electoral choices of the people are determined. Naturally, the bigger the number of votes canvassed, the closer you get to the true will of the people,” Manalastas said.

    He said the correct test to determine a conspiracy was not to check the national averages to see how close to 60-30-10 one could get “because this is exactly what the law of large numbers tells us that we will get.”

    Precinct comparison

    The more correct indicator of a conspiracy, he said, was “if we get the same 60-30-10 figures in a precinct-by-precinct comparison, provided that the precinct figures were used to get the national canvass.”

    Muga agreed, saying the Comelec should release the complete ERs (election returns), which are electronic precinct-based results.

    About 23 percent of the ERs failed to enter the servers of the Comelec, of its citizens’ arm (the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) and of Rappler due to malfunctioning precinct count optical scan machines and transmission problems.

    “There is a need to study more thoroughly the 2013 election data. I hope Comelec will make these public 100 percent. We need to study the different ERs. It has four versions. The printed copies, those sent to municipal BOCs, those sent to central servers and those sent to the transparency servers. First question: ‘Are they the same for each precinct?’” Manalastas said.

    Comelec to study pattern

    On Thursday, Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. told reporters that the Comelec’s IT department was studying Muga’s analysis.

    “I’m having our people study it to see if it’s true, although initially, it seems there is that kind of pattern. We’re still checking it and looking into the basis. We’ll not make a conclusion yet. They said there was a pattern. I don’t know if it’s a pattern. We’ll wait for our IT department’s report,” Brillantes said.

    Lingganay Han Kamatuoran, media group of the Eastern Visayas chapter of the militant Promotion of Church Peoples Response, said the pattern was also evident in the Tacloban City COC, which represents 189 clustered precincts.

    “The total senatorial votes in Tacloban indicated an interestingly similar 60-30-10 pattern of vote-sharing. Specifically, Team PNoy bets enjoyed a 60.90-percent share of total senatorial votes while UNA bets had 29.66 percent and Makabayan [and] all other independent candidates got 9.44 percent of senatorial votes,” the group said in a public status update on its Facebook account.

    ‘Amazing’ Bohol

    Rick Bahague of the Computer Professionals Union also shared on Facebook a chart of the Bohol COC showing voting results from 18 towns, which he described as “amazing.”

    “Boholanos seem to have been genetically modified. They voted the same. The rank of the senators is almost the same in all the towns,” he said in a public status update.

    In another update, he said “[t]he teachers should spank the voters in the municipalities of Bohol because they apparently copied from one another.”

    Bahague created another chart using COCs from Eastern, Central and Western Visayas sent to the NBOC. He said the pattern was the same, which he likened to “shirt stripes.”

    Independent probe

    Evangelical leader Bro. Eddie Villanueva, meanwhile, urged the Aquino administration to create a “truth commission” to investigate the alleged irregularities in the recent automated elections.

    “We call on the government to create an independent investigative body to look into the automated election system that was plagued by numerous technical glitches that might have disenfranchised millions of voters,” Villanueva, who lost in the senatorial elections, said in a statement.—With a report from Philip C. Tubeza

    SOURCE: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/413769/more-doubts-raised-about-poll-results

    • Excerpt

      (Ateneo professor Lex ) Muga agreed, saying the Comelec should release the complete ERs (election returns), which are electronic precinct-based results.

      About 23 percent of the ERs failed to enter the servers of the Comelec, of its citizens’ arm (the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) and of Rappler due to malfunctioning precinct count optical scan machines and transmission problems.

      “There is a need to study more thoroughly the 2013 election data. I hope Comelec will make these public 100 percent. We need to study the different ERs. It has four versions. The printed copies, those sent to municipal BOCs, those sent to central servers and those sent to the transparency servers. First question: ‘Are they the same for each precinct?’” Manalastas said (Pablo Manalastas, IT consultant of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance) .

      Bold emphasis, full inserts in parenthesis mine.

      – PCOS’ window display of Hanky-panky DATA?

      – Read also #24.1 baycas ‘Ateneo prof’s 60-30-10 poll results pattern gets Comelec’s attention’ May 21, 2013 6:31pm

      • CF Cards are not Modems

        18,000 PCOS machines suffered transmission woes, says poll chief

        By Matikas Santos
        INQUIRER.net
        4:01 pm | Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

        MANILA, Philippines – Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. said Thursday that about 18,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines or a quarter out of the total 78,000 machines had experienced transmission problems.

        The main cause of transmission problems were corrupted Compact Flash (CF) cards and lack of cellular network coverage, Brillantes said.

        “[It’s a mix of problems], but most of these are transmission problems, not the PCOS problems,” he told reporters in an ambush interview. Brillantes added that “18,000 [are around] 24 or 25 percent of the 78,000 PCOS [machines].”

        When it comes to transmission problems caused by CF cards, Brillantes said that these were very few compared to the signal problems.

        READ the rest of the article at http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/414059/18000-pcos-machines-suffered-transmission-woes-says-poll-chief

        • losers stop complaining, spend the rest of the campaign money to poor people in your areas, the country must move on….lagi na lang ganyan, yun mga talunan putak ng putak

        • Thanks @baycas.

          A lot of people are nervous on this development.

          I hope the Robles couple can get a copy from the ‘Transparency Server’ for ‘Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (for media)’. And share a link here for the CPM to look, study and analyze. o dili kaya sa pinoy wiki leak website (?)

          Alan has written about this for many years, time for reckoning on how the COMELEC, political parties and their campaign manipulators do manage & handle the elections (national, provincial, city & barangay) for candidates (dynasty or not).

        • Thanks for sharing your book review (dated APRIL 10 007, ooops).

          As above, the info (database or electronic ERs or in what format they can supply) would support, affirm or justify the book’s contributors’ research, on tips, as guides for political enthusiasts and wannabees.

          The writers’ sequel may perhaps have a better design for its next book cover.

          In my opinion, the above info (ER data from all precincts) is a trove of information when intelligently deciphered.

        • Yeah I know about the date. I’m using a static CMS so it’s a bitch to correct, my plans to upgrade to dynamic CMS have been derailed by some unlikely developments. I thought I’d be Drupalized in time for the elections, but alas

    • Indeed, the pattern is easily explained (depending on what data you were looking at) by what we call the law of large numbers. As canvass upon canvass reported larger and larger voter results (in the millions!), then the percentages of votes for Team PNoy should not change very much with each new canvass.

      And indeed, this is borne out in Rappler’s story. When you look more closely at data from region to region, you don’t see the pattern. Each region reports Team PNoy as winning, but with a respectable spread of the numbers as each region has them as stronger or weaker. There is a difference of nearly 6% for Team PNoy between the region where it performed well (Region 5) and the region where it did poorly (Region 2). And in politics as well as in statistics, 6% is a large difference!

      In fact, the 60-30-10 event is telling us two things, none of which has anything to do with electoral cheating.

      Please read more here…

      http://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/29861-what-the-60-30-10-pattern-really-tells-us

      • @baycas, sulat ng kumare mo oh.

        Get Real
        Pointed questions for the Comelec chair
        By Solita Collas-Monsod
        Philippine Daily Inquirer
        10:44 pm | Friday, May 24th, 2013

        …
        Notice, Reader, that Brillantes is actually agreeing with the fraud/conspiracy theorists that the 60-30-10 voting pattern for senators means there was fraud, i.e., that the machines were programmed to result in such a pattern. He then declares emphatically that the machines were not programmed. A declaration which, presumably, he expects us to take on faith, because there was no time for a review of the source code by interested parties as the law provides. Unfortunately, given the many times he has been caught in what can only politely be termed as “inaccuracies”—I will give some examples anon—taking him on faith can only mean that either one is utterly naive, or that one is his mother.

        But let us see where his reasoning leads us: The 60-30-10 pattern can only mean that the machines were programmed. The machines were NOT programmed. Therefore, the pattern could not have occurred. Which, of course, flies in the face of what the transmitted results from the Comelec’s own transparency servers reveal. But Brillantes has never been one to let the facts get in the way of his story or his conclusions.

        So why did I start this column by saying that Brillantes was in the right of it? Well, because a 60-30-10 pattern in the senatorial results does not necessarily mean that fraud was committed, or, as the conspiracy/fraud advocates claim, that the results are statistically impossible/improbable). It is merely the law of large numbers (LLN) at work.

        According to the LLN, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed. Applying that to our elections, the number of trials would refer to the transmissions from the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines, and the expected value would be what the Filipino voters really wanted (the will of the people).

        Now, if the 60-30-10 pattern had also been reflected from the regional votes, that would arouse my suspicions, more so with provincial votes, and so on down the line. And the Reader will be relieved to know that while the national pattern was 60-30-10 consistently, the regional pattern did not exhibit such consistency.

        READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE at http://opinion.inquirer.net/53255/pointed-questions-for-the-comelec-chair

    • Good Luck Richard Gordon

      Gordon tells Comelec: Don’t remove PCOS
      By Jerome Aning
      Philippine Daily Inquirer
      6:16 am | Saturday, May 25th, 2013

      MANILA, Philippines—Senatorial candidate Richard Gordon and his party, the Bagumbayan-Volunteers for a New Philippines has asked the Supreme Court to stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from removing the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that were used in the May 13 elections from the polling precincts where they were stationed for the recent poll exercise.

      In an urgent omnibus motion with a prayer for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO), Gordon asked the high tribunal to direct Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. to comply with the latter’s earlier commitment to provide the petitioners or their designated representatives or information technology experts with a “complete compilable digital copy” of the source code for the automated election system that was used in the May 13 polls.

      Gordon also asked for the issuance of a TRO to stop the poll body from removing the PCOS machines from their respective precincts, schoolhouses or present whereabouts and transferring them to the Comelec warehouse to prevent any tampering with the components, contents and software encoded into the gadgets.
      The former senator, author of Republic Act No. 9369, or the Automated Elections System Law, said the issuance of a TRO would preserve the petitioners’ legal right to determine whether or not the source code encoded or loaded into the PCOS machines is identical to the source code to be provided by the Comelec to the petitioners.

      Read the Complete article at http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/414979/gordon-tells-comelec-dont-remove-pcos

    • did you make all 12 marks allowed for senatoriables?

      the average number of senator marks in at least one precinct is below 1 per voter, a curious phenomenon. overall, countrywide the average is just over 7 per voter, well below the 12 i was expecting to see.

      seems 12 marks is way too many to make, fairer if just 1 next time.

      • @jim

        Where is your reference info or which web link(s) you got this, “the average number of senator marks in at least one precinct is below 1 per voter, a curious phenomenon. overall, countrywide the average is just over 7 per voter, well below the 12 i was expecting to see.”?

        Ta

        • i scraped the comelec data and calculated myself for a random precincts / levels. sadly webpage with statistics buried in middle, are not conducive to analysis.

          as voters are allowed to select/mark upto 12 senatorial candidates. I reckoned that dividing total senator votes by actual voters would be interesting metric/signal to calculate that should tend to 12 and be available at all levels of count for comparison.

          at national level, i could see that senator votes didn’t equal 12 times actual voters. in fact we see 238,828,920 senator votes/marks and 31,568,679 actual voters. dividing gives us 7.5653 marks per voter. so decided to drill down to better see the distribution.

          taking…
          http://2013electionresults.comelec.gov.ph/res_reg38210003.html

          when you open ‘senator’, you are presented with the breakdown of votes for each senator, and below the total number of voters who actually voted. i copied into excel, summed up all the senator votes, got (315), and divide by actual voters (427) to get a seemingly low 0.7377 marks made against the senatorial race by each voter.

          IMHO, this raises a question about the equity of making multiple marks in the senatorial race. those who do not make 12 marks effectively have their vote diluted by those who do. it makes first past the post (only allow a single mark/vote) seem fairer.

          without considering foul play, other thoughts…
          are voters educated in the ballot, perhaps its too complex/time consuming?
          perhaps many voters are not interested in senator race?
          perhaps some pcos malfunctioned failing to count senator votes?

        • Thanks @jim

          I’ll read it at length this weekend.

          People who care should acknowledge the work of committed filipinos like AES Watch who still keeps the issues alive too.

          Otherwise, the next barangay elections is a repeat of the recent one.

    • these losers got a never ending drama, yuou better spend the rest of the campaign money to the poor, election were done, move on you a** ***e…