AN election watchdog is calling for an increased transparency in the post-qualification evaluation of automated voting systems.
It was learned that Democracy Watch has formally requested the Comelec’s Special Bids & Awards Committee (SBAC) to provide a checklist of technical specifications and conduct a thorough review of Miru’s system alongside observers. This process aims to ensure that stakeholders are adequately equipped to comprehend how all requirements are evaluated and declared compliant or non-compliant.
In its comprehensive letter to the SBAC, Democracy Watch (DemWatch) also expressed concern about the insufficient quality of the existing live online streaming of the post-qualification proceedings. The organization suggests measures such as hiring a professional broadcast crew to enhance the audio-visual clarity. This would allow the public and observers to closely follow the evaluations, reinforcing the integrity of the process.
In addition, the group presented six critical requirements that Miru Systems must clarify to satisfy public scrutiny and uphold the election’s integrity: the status of the Automated Counting Machine (ACM) as a prototype or a previously used system, especially considering its analogousness to systems implicated in past technical failures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq elections; adherence to specified encryption standards, crucial for safeguarding election data; capability of maintaining an immutable audit log to ensure system accountability and prevent unauthorized data alterations; precise information on the “ladderization” in the transmission process, which affects the canvassing and consolidation processes; clarification on the paper thickness used by the ACM, conforming to COMELEC specifications to prevent ballot jams, misfeeds, and ink issues that could compromise vote counts and verification that the re-zero feature of the voting machine strictly follows COMELEC’s regulations to avert unrestricted resetting that could undermine the integrity of elections.
Democracy Watch said that diligently campaigns for these enhancements and that their efforts underline the ongoing pursuit for a credible and secure election system that adequately serves the democratic landscape of the Philippines.
