Junk AES, go manual

PERRYSCOPE
Perry Diaz

With just two days left to election day, the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines lay idle with “lobotomized” Compact Flash (CF) cards waiting for a surgical procedure to correct the glitches that turned the PCOS into automated dagdag-bawas cheating machines.

Indeed, what’s happening is the culmination of a series of suspicious missteps in the development of the Automated Election System (AES). The Comelec commissioners had an opportunity to rigidly test AES but instead took the easy and convenient way by foregoing the requisite tests. It was like saying, “Hey, let’s not do the tests and just cross our fingers and hope that everything would be hunky-dory.”

That would be akin to NASA designing a space ship without testing its prototype and then use it to send an astronaut to the Moon. If you were the astronaut, would you agree to board the space ship?

So, it wasn’t a surprise that when Comelec officials performed some tests in selected precincts, the PCOS machines malfunctioned. The tests conducted in Occidental Mindoro and Muntinglupa City showed that the votes for Noynoy Aquino and Many Villar were counted for administration candidate Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro.
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Latest news on this imbroglio says, “Machines that will count votes in the Philippines presidential election next week worked accurately after last-minute repairs, but tallies still may be delayed in the most far-flung areas of the archipelago, officials said Thursday.” Now, this is highly suspicious. How could Smartmatic-TIM make the corrections, install the new CF cards, field-test the 76,000 PCOS machines that were affected by the glitch in less than two days? What is the likelihood that a large number of the -- if not all -- 76,000 new CF cards would malfunction on election day when 50 million voters go to the polls?

No contingency plan
On Thursday , Helen Aguila-Flores, a Comelec official in Western Mindanao told a meeting of civilian, police and military officials: “That Comelec has no contingency plan in case automation fails is a reality that I want everyone to wake up to, and as of today… I am sorry to tell you, my office cannot answer that. Hopefully we cross the bridge when we get there.” The problem is: That bridge leads to nowhere but chaos and total breakdown.

According to Comelec officials, the 76,000 corrected CF cards will be delivered to precincts throughout the country on May 8, two days before election day. That means that Comelec has less than two days to re-test the PCOS machines. What if the tests failed again? With no contingency plan, what’s next?

“Melodramatic”
A few weeks ago, Comelec Chairman Jose Melo, after 17 million manual ballots had been printed, stopped the production because he believed that the automated system was fail-safe. He even ordered one of the five printers disabled because it was no longer needed. Then he promised that if AES failed to work, he would resign. Melodramatic, indeed. I must admire him for his bravura. He’s got balls of steel.

It’s like Indiana Jones cutting the suspension bridge after crossing into the jungle to face the unknown. But Melo is not Indiana Jones! He is responsible for the orderly process of electing more than 70,000 candidates running for office on May 10. For him to implement an untested automated system without a contingency plan is not only irresponsible, it’s a crime against the Filipino people. He should resign now! However, that would be an easy way out.

But there is no easy way out of the predicament that Comelec is in right now. It’s caught between two hard rocks. If the elections were postponed, it could lead to military intervention to protect the State, officially, and Gloria Arroyo, unofficially. If the elections were to proceed, failure of elections would likely occur in which case the military would certainly intervene to protect the State… and keep Gloria in power.

Failure of elections
Notwithstanding claims that everything is now okay, there remains a great potential for a catastrophic failure of elections on May 10. In the computer and automation industry, “contingency planning” is an integral part of an implementation plan to deal with glitches and other problems.

Murphy’s Law, which says, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” is foremost in any system designer’s concerns. He has to develop a contingency plan or a workable backup system, which could be the system that is being replaced. After all, the existing system works.

When Melo decided to stop printing the manual ballots, he committed a cardinal sin. He violated the rule not to discard the old system until the new system is perfected and implemented successfully.

Manual system
Last May 6, it was reported that “Sen. Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero joined calls for the holding of a mandatory manual counting next week as he doubts the Commission on Elections' ability to push through with the automated polls.”

As co-chairman of the congressional oversight committee on poll automation, Chiz said that “all indications showed Comelec could not proceed with the first automated polls in the country.” He said that Comelec has to admit that it can’t proceed with automation for Congress to intervene and set another date for the balloting.

Melo can save face by blaming Smartmatic-TIM for the fiasco, after all it was Smartmatic-TIM who -- wittingly or unwittingly -- created the problem. And this brings to mind if Smartmatic-TIM was purposely brought in -- a Trojan Horse -- for the purpose of sabotaging the elections to insure the victory of administration candidates.

The only way to stop the impending “carnage” is to remove the Trojan Horse from the scene and resort to the manual system. The time has come for Comelec to make the final decision prior to implementation: “GO” or “NO GO.”

The decision should be “NO GO.” Junk AES, go manual.(PerryDiaz@gmail. com)