If you haven’t noticed, the “automated” in this elections actually involves the tabulation of votes, not the actual casting of votes. Voters will be given pre-printed ballots, where they will mark their preferred candidates by shading the circles under the names of their choice. Ballots are then fed into a voting district counting machine, where votes are automatically tallied and forwarded to municipal and national servers. The counting machines will transmit election returns encrypted, and will print out eight copies for the various political parties and voting watchdogs to cross-check manually.

In case you haven’t noticed, the election automation involves Smartmatic International, which has implemented automated elections in the US, Mexico, Venezuela, Barbados, Spain, Taiwan, and of course the Philippines. It has faced controversy while handling the 2004 recall vote in Venezuela, so local agents have stepped up a campaign to educate the electorate and convince them of the process’ integrity at bagongbotante.ph.

Have you ever cast your votes through an automated system? Feel free to share your experience below.

Source:

• Dan Rather Investigates Voting Machines — Uncovers New Surprises About ES&S Touch-Screens
• ELECTION 2010: Comelec’s counting machines in action

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said that while they do not have any objection to hackers trying to test the security of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to be used in the 2010 polls, granting huge reward might not be beneficial for the project.

“It’s really our plan to invite ethical hackers. We have no problem on inviting ethical hackers in general,” he told The STAR.

But Jimenez warned that granting such a reward, the Comelec “might not just only be inviting ethical hackers” but even those who might only fool around with the automation system.

Fact: the only way to claim the $2 million reward—if instituted—would be to approach the COMELEC and show them the flaw right? The very nature of the reward requires any participating “hacker” or IT expert to be “ethical”, in the sense that they have to disclose their findings to get the reward.

The incentive makes sense, but I still would like to see the government use it not as an excuse to cancel the planned 2010 poll automation, but as a way to reveal flaws in the system that can be patched.

But on the other hand, it makes sense not to spend that much money after all, a great point raised by election lawyer Romulo Macalintal:

“Why should the government spend P100 million to prove that its planned poll automation is hack-free? Those who believe or have ample proof that it could be hacked should prove it and spend for it,” he said.

Macalintal said the “culture of mistrust is the one which gives a bad and dirty picture of our electoral process.”

“Speculations or imagined fear of fraud in automated polls give our people, especially the youth, that lifelong impression that all elections in this country are marred with irregularity,” he added.

Amen to that.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

As Technograph reports:

Cayetano, at a press conference Friday, said that if any IT expert can establish that the system to be used in the 2010 polls is not secure from fraud and tampering, “Comelec should cancel the contract, save the P11 billion and sue for damages the contractor in the event of such successful hacking.”

He said he would rather revert to the manual counting of votes if the computerized system would lead to wholesale cheating.

The senator does not seem to realize that even the most well-designed system will have flaws that someone will eventually discover—especially if they have such a massive incentive to do so.

Why would the senator insist on canceling the system’s implementation if (actually when) an exploit is found? Wouldn’t it make more sense to collect the data on any holes discovered, plug them, and thus maximize the $2 million reward’s impact?

It seems Mr. Cayetano’s paranoia about automating elections in the Philippines is clouding his judgment. What do you think, dear readers?

Post from: The Gadget Blog