People's orgs seek recount via ballot images

Concerned citizens representing various people's organizations filed with the Supreme Court on 11 November 2010, a mandamus petition to compel Comelec to disclose the digital photo images of all ballots cast during the 10 May 2010 elections.

The proponents declared the purpose of their legal action -- to enable the people to audit the automated election system (AES) and verify the correctness of the electronic election results.

The petitioners invoked their constitutional right to information, to secure the “sanctity of the ballot”.

They expressed serious concern on the actions of Comelec itself, in leaving the AES vulnerable to electronic fraud, by disabling critical security features in violation of existing laws and rules.

They questioned the following actions of Comelec:

(a) removing the requirement of digital signatures for the individual members of the board election inspectors (BEI), leaving the electronic processes of counting and transmission to the total control of the private contractor Smartmatic, contrary to law.

(b) disabling the built-in ultra violet (UV) scanning capability of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine and their subsequent replacement by hand-held scanners, virtually leaving the system incapable of detecting fake ballots, since the use of the hand-held scanners was rendered impractical on election day due to the clustering of up to 7 precincts per machine.

(c) deviating from the mandated random manual audit (RMA) process, where the RMA was not conducted immediately after the transmission of election results, not conducted right at the precinct, and the results of the audit were not released immediately after the audit.

Various people's organizations supported the legal action, i.e. Filipino Migrant Workers Group (FMW), Global Filipino Nation (GFN), Global Filipinos Australia, Global Filipinos Canada, Our Barangay, Inc., Partidong Pandaigdigang Pilipino (PPP Central), Philippine American Press Club - Northern California, Lawyers for Transparency (L4T), and We Citizen Advocates for Reforms Movement (We Care), Inc., under the umbrella of the Protect our Democracy Movement (PODM).

Nonetheless, the proponents clarified that their action was not intended to be a substitute for an election protest.

Dodong aka Ka Kiko