PRESS RELEASE

Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch)

April 13, 2010

AES Watch asks Comelec to ‘demonstrate faith’

After some counting machines deployed for overseas absentee voters in Hong Kong
failed to operate, the multisectoral election watchdog AES Watch has now asked the
Commission on Elections (Comelec) to “demonstrate its own full faith” in the automated
election system (AES) to be implemented on May 10.

AES Watch said Comelec’s faith in its own system can be proven by holding a
realistic mock election before election day, doing a proper random manual audit prior to
winning candidates’ proclamation, and installing large video projectors in every
canvassing center on election day.

These “three redeeming actions” were cited in a letter addressed today to Comelec
Chairman Jose Melo, and signed by three AESWatch conveners Alfredo Pascual,
Bishop Broderick Pabillo, and Temario Rivera.

Bishop Pabillo is national director of the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines-National

Secretariat for Social Action (CBCP-NASSA). Pascual, who is also AES Watch
spokesperson, is president of the University of the Philippines Alumni Association
(UPAA), while Rivera, PhD, is vice-chair of the Center for People’s Empowerment in
Governance (CenPEG).

These three steps will entail costs, the three AESWatch co-conveners said, but
“these will be much, much less than the more than P7.3 billion being spent on the AES.”
It is “a small price to pay to help raise the confidence of all elections stakeholders that
can have trouble-free and credible elections come May 10,” they added.

Funding for these “redeeming actions” should not be problem, as the General
Appropriations Act of 2010 (RA 9770) gives Comelec another P10.4 billion of which
P5.2 billion is set aside for the automated national and local elections.

In its letter, AES Watch expressed fears that “our country will have an AES that (i)
has been so hastily set up as to subject voters to risks of disenfranchisement; and (ii)
has been stripped of processes and features to safeguard against fraud, internal
rigging, and third-party attacks.”

In many occasions, AES Watch experts have monitored and expressed concerns
over preparations for the automated election system (AES).

Recently, AES Watch said that Comelec’s own Technical Evaluation Committee
“failed to give a clean and categorical certification, as mandated by law that the AES,
including its hardware and software components, is operating properly, securely, and
accurately”.
 “The belated “certification” by TEC dated March 9, 2010 was conditional and not
categorical,” and simply “premised on certain proposed or future actions still to be
implemented (e.g., adoption and operationalization of a contingency plan, full adoption
of the recommended compensating controls), partly based on certifications by Comelec
itself, rather than “through an established international certification entity,” AES Watch
said.

To correct impressions, Comelec must now conduct a realistic mock election

involving more than 10 precincts representing the various local conditions in the
country, and with 1,000 voters per precinct. A realistic mock election will show that the
AES is ready, and will likely erase doubts about risks that voters might not all be able to
cast their ballots or that the machines (e.g., PCOS, CCS, transmission devices) might
not work properly.

Recent field tests and mock elections held by Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM for
technology certification purposes suffered from problems with the counting machine,
especially in feeding and reading of ballots, transmission of election results, etc. The
mock polls showed that there is a risk of not accommodating 1,000 voters within the 11-
hour voting period. The use of hand-held UV lamps to detect security marks on the
ballots is a new, added step that needs be tested first as part of the voting cycle.

AES Watch also said that Comelec must do a proper random manual (RMA) audit
prior to proclamation, covering a sufficiently large number of precincts across the
country, and randomly selected on election day itself. The RMA must be carried out by
another set of Board of Election Inspectors.

The plea for an RMA was prompted by Comelec’s failure to address the AES’ internal
vulnerabilities of the AES, such as the lack of proper source code review by interested
groups, the disabling of the verifiability of voter’s choice, and the elimination of the BEI’s
digital signatures for transmission of results.

Said AESWatch, “We now look at the RMA done before proclamation as an external
safeguard that could provide the AES a last line of defense against internal rigging.”

Comelec must also install large video projectors in every canvassing center and
display the Election Results (ERs) or Certificates of Canvas (COCs) being canvassed
for pollwatchers to detect discrepancies between the printed ERs and the transmitted
ERs, and make canvassing transparent and auditable. These projectors will facilitate
the detection of ERs transmitted from illegal PCOS machines, and ERs transmitted from
legitimate PCOS machines that differ from the corresponding printed ERs.

Aside from CenPEG, NASSA-CBCP, and UPAA, AESWatch members include Association of Major
Religious Superiors in the Philippines; National Council of Churches in the Philippines; Association of
Schools of Public Administration of the Philippines; Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team;
Transparency International; National Union of Students of the Philippines; Computer Professionals
Union; Pagbabago (Movement for Social Change); Council for Health and Development; Movement for
Good Governance; Health Alliance for Democracy; Senior Catholic Citizens’ Organization;
Transparentelections.org; Coordinating Council for People’s Development; Solidarity Philippines; and top
computer organizations and specialists.
AES Watch office is c/o UPAA, Ang Bahay ng Alumni Bldg., Magsaysay St., UP Diliman, Quezon City;
Tel. No. 9206868 or 71; 9299526.