"Smartmatic-TIM has proven nothing yet," reacted Mr. Rick Bahague, national coordinator of the Computer Professionals' Union (CPU) with regards to the proud winning bidder of the COMELEC's Automated Elections System (AES), Smartmatic International and Total Information Management Corp. (Smartmatic-TIM). "At this point, they are already the best tool of potential Garcis for fraud and cheating on the 2010 elections."
"The bidding process was just a test of hardware functions," explains Mr. Bahague. AES has hardware, software and other needs in order to be implemented. CPU has dared COMELEC to require the winning bidder to reveal their AES's source code to the public.
The source code is the set of instructions written by a programmer which will be translated into a computer-executable form that instructs the AES as it counts, consolidates, and transmits data. The AES source code can be modified to favor a particular candidate, totally hidden from pollwatchers. Cheating can be mathematically consistent unlike the usual dagdag-bawas scheme.
In 2007, the State of California did a thorough review of similar AES systems. The review revealed erroneous programming and serious security vulnerabilities on all systems tested. "COMELEC should gather computer and security experts to review SMARTMATIC-TIM's AES," reiterates Mr. Bahague.
"99.99% accuracy of the test machine does not mean that the 2010 election will be accurate and that errors and frauds will be eliminated by SMARTMATIC-TIM," adds Mr. Bahague. COMELEC has required bidders' test machines to pass the high accuracy rate set by the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC). "They were 99.99% accurate in a very controlled environment. Once machines are deployed, they'll find it very difficult to have such accuracy."
"The people wants an election with secret voting and transparent canvassing. But now we are forced to accept whatever the result from this AES." warns Mr. Bahague. "The real danger now is that whoever currently holds political power controls the technology, and thus will control the elections."
CPU has compiled resources on AES at http://wiki.cp-union.com ###
