Editorial re smartmatic involvement and inconsistencies in 2016 philippines election. 1/2
https://www.manilatimes.net/2016/06/21/opinion/columnists/never-again-to-smartmatic/269238/amp/
Never again! …to Smartmatic
The Manila Times
By THE MANILA TIMES
June 21, 2016
By this time, only the truly uninformed would still find Smartmatic’s combination of PCOS/VCM (Precinct Count Optical Scan/Vote Counting Machine) and CCS (canvassing and consolidation system) an acceptable solution to the automation of Philippine elections. We used this solution in the last three National and Local Elections (NLE) and in all three, we experienced “glitches” and lack of transparency that convinced us of the system’s unreliability and its vulnerability to tampering.
Consider the following incidents:
During the canvassing of the 2008 ARMM (Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao) election, several precincts in Wao, Lanao del Sur, showed zero results. When this was reported to Smartmatic, a technical person in the company accessed the machines in Wao and made the correction … from Manila! This is the first proof that Smartmatic can change the results in any region, at will, from anywhere in the country.
Exactly one week before the 2010 elections, Smartmatic’s systems test yielded erroneous results. This triggered the replacement of supposedly “all CF cards” installed in the 82,000 PCOS machines. Many found it difficult to believe that they were able to do this successfully – i.e., replace those many CF cards in a span of one week. But if they failed to do so, how do we explain the fact that they were able to announce election results that came close to what the surveys published? One possibility stood out: program the results to follow the surveys. Hmm … not all that difficult to do.
In the same elections, the number of registered voters hit the 250 million mark at the start of canvassing – way, way beyond the 40-50 million actual count. Smartmatic again accessed the erroneous count and changed it. Yet another proof that they can easily alter election process figures.
In just the first two hours of canvassing of the 2013 Senatorial elections, Senator Poe garnered more than 10 million votes – and was wildly increasing by the minute. Again, Smartmatic accessed the system and altered the count progress to a more reasonable rate, once more proving that they could tamper with the results at will.
Toward the end of the canvassing in 2013, the votes went up and down by the millions, without any explanation being given by Smartmatic. Nor by Comelec. What? The voters did not have a say in the results?! What did Joseph Stalin say? “It is not the people who vote that count, it is the people who count the votes.”
Still in 2013, when the final results were published, they showed some ratios that were difficult to believe: the total votes of the administration candidates represented 60% of all the votes; those of the dominant opposition, 30%; and those of the rest of the candidates, 10% — in all the regions and in all the 16 canvassing reports. As if the results were pre-programmed.