With just a few days away from 2016 Presidential Election, Commission on Elections (COMELEC) is still dealing with minor glitches. Although Smartmatic International has already assured of an election free of technical issues, there are still some doubts on the effectiveness of vote counting machines in terms of delivering the fast and accurate results.
Smartmatic General Manager Elie Moreno assures voters that it’s all systems go after conducting a mock election on May 3, 2016. All of the vote counting machines have already been delivered and each machine has undergone an international certification review. A hardware acceptance test and local source code review have been put in place. There is a total of 92,509 VCMs, which will be used in the elections. In the event of technical failures, there are additional 5000 machines on standby, which will be used as backup.
The ballots are ready and the technology, which will be used for verifying votes has been checked. The final testing was conducted on Monday and even teachers who will serve as the inspectors of board of election have tested the machines. Although COMELEC encountered a problem with cyber security due to hacking of voter’s personal data, both COMELEC and Smartmatic gave an assurance that the machines are hack-free.
The VCMs are not connected to the Internet and with that said, Lawyer Karen Jimeno assures that hackers do not have access to the information. Jimeno also added that the level of encryption of VCM is 256 bits and this is much higher than the security used for banking programs. Aside from the high encryption level, Smartmatic also use an encrypted SD (Secure Digital) card. The card is intended for preventing tampering of election results.
The preparation of these vote counting machines is said to be in compliance with Republic Act No. 9369:
"SEC.14. Examination and Testing of Equipment or Device of the AES and Opening of the Source Code for Review. - The Commission shall allow the political parties and candidates or their representatives, citizens' arm or their representatives to examine and test.
"The equipment or device to be used in the voting and counting on the day of the electoral exercise, before voting start. Test ballots and test forms shall be provided by the Commission.
"Immediately after the examination and testing of the equipment or device, parties and candidates or their representatives, citizen's arms or their representatives, may submit a written comment to the election officer who shall immediately transmit it to the Commission for appropriate action.
"The election officer shall keep minutes of the testing, a copy of which shall be submitted to the Commission together with the minute of voting."
"Once an AES technology is selected for implementation, the Commission shall promptly make the source code of that technology available and open to any interested political party or groups which may conduct their own review thereof."
