"The Commission on Elections should reveal to the public its back-up plan for automating the 2010 National Elections now that all bidders were disqualified by the Commission", said Mr. Rick Bahague, coordinator of the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU).
"As the COMELEC mulls going into a negotiated contract with a vendor, all the more it should be transparent as to the technical viability, reliability and security of the upcoming automated elections exercise", said Bahague. CPU have previously stated that a transparent, credible, fair and accurate AES can only be achieved if the following are considered: technical assessments on the AES; the AES should be reviewed by a large number of outside security experts with knowledge in computer security and cryptography; and the source code of the system should be open and available to the public. Furthermore, the AES should have voter-verifiable audit trails for reference. It should accurately capture the voters’ intent to actual tally. The AES should be secured such that ballot secrecy is protected and tampering is made difficult. It should be able to effectively handle a large number of voters and it should release report faster than the manual elections.
“The AES should be analyzed following appropriate test plans to point out its vulnerabilities but even with a good system, a trusted agency that runs the elections is a prerequisite for it being transparent, fair and credible,” added Bahague.
"We also raise the problem of having questionable and unreliable vendors as was shown by COMELEC's bidding exercise. Having all seven vendors disqualified is an indication that the industry is not yet prepared to carry out such a big task and that these providers are not yet equipped with the apt technology which will fill in our requirements", said the CPU coordinator.
"If COMELEC chooses someone, through a negotiated contract, to carry out the task, they should be prepared to show how they would be able to implement it despite COMELEC's tight project implementation", stressed Bahague. They should ensure that their systems are tamper-proof from insiders especially within COMELEC. A Hello Garci-like situation is not hard to imagine given the history of elections in our country.
A simple equation can be derived on the whole scheme of the COMELEC on the AES: COMELEC’s tarnished credibility and inefficiency + very tight project implementation + questionable and unreliable systems offered by vendors is a recipe for disaster.
The CPU challenges COMELEC to be genuinely transparent. Genuine transparency, according to the CPU is not only about informing the public the result of the bidding process and the COMELEC’s plan to implement negotiated contract in case no other bidders will be successful to get to the second round of the bidding process. For the COMELEC to be genuinely transparent, they need to provide the public the back-up plan for the 2010 election especially with the event that transpired in the bidding process. Also, COMELEC should be ready to present the consortium which will succeed the bidding process to a third-party which is composed of Filipino scientists and Filipino IT experts for review and scrutiny.
