Deliberate deception

Strategic Perspective
Rene B. Azurin
Posted on 15 August 2012
Business World

OUTRIGHT DECEPTIONS are apparently permissible in what really appears to be a conspiracy to foist the Commission on Elections (Comelec)-favored Smartmatic automated election system on the Filipino people. This no longer surprises.

Perhaps as part of the "foisting" effort, the Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms of the House of Representatives called on Smartmatic-TIM Corp. to conduct "an end-to-end election simulation…to once and for all address the issue of accuracy." That "demo" -- a "mock election" with some 1,000 voters -- was done at the House last July 24 and 25. Votes were cast through a Smartmatic machine, the machine issued its count, and a manual verification of the count was then done to check if there were discrepancies between the electronic and the manual count. Presumably, Smartmatic used its best machine for the demo, one that it had thoroughly tested.

Unfortunately for Smartmatic and its conspirators, the actual results of the mock election revealed performance deficiencies in the Smartmatic precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine, in the form of below-standard accuracy levels. As a result, Smartmatic was forced to fudge the figures it showed in its "Mock Elections Summary Report" (dated August 3rd) to make its machine appear more accurate than it actually was. Doubtless, the intention was to hide the deficiencies and effectively deceive the public.

The fudging was pointed out by Dr. Felix Muga II, mathematics professor at the Ateneo University. (The fudging was also noticed by many others.) For example, in the "senatorial" count, Smartmatic’s PCOS machine counted 6,184 votes and the manual verification showed an actual 6,309 votes, a difference of 125 votes. Smartmatic then reported that the "Percentage of Match between Manual and Electronic Count is 99.98019%," a figure that has no arithmetical basis and seems to have been just conjured out of thin air. Dr. Muga says, "The calculation is wrong since (1 - 125 / 6,309) x 100% = 98.0187%." It should be noted that this figure is well below the accuracy level of 99.999% specified in the Terms of Reference and its contract with Comelec.

Moreover, Dr. Muga adds, that method of calculating "match" is actually "misleading." He says, "The PCOS Count differed in 50 of the 55 senatorial candidates. Hence, the percentage of match between the PCOS count and the manual count for all of the senatorial candidates is a measly 9.0909%." That’s nine percent.

In the "presidential" count, Smartmatic reported a "Percentage of Match between Manual and Electronic Count [of] 99.99280%," basing this on a net difference of 6 between the total presidential votes of 833 counted by the PCOS machine and the total presidential votes of 827 counted in the manual verification. The figure is derived from (1 - 6 / 833) x 100% = 99.99280%. Again, this is wrong. In the actual results, it must be the absolute differences -- not the net differences (positive discrepancies shouldn’t cancel out negative discrepancies) -- in the count for each candidate that determines accuracy. Dr. Muga says, "If we sum up the absolute difference between the manual count and the PCOS count for each of the presidential candidates, we shall obtain 52. Hence, the accuracy of the PCOS Count compared to the manual count is (1 - 52 / 827) x 100% = 93.7172213%." Again, this is way below the required 99.999%.

Additionally, Dr. Muga adds, "It [that figure] does not explain why the PCOS Count differs from the manual count in 33 out of 55 presidential candidates. Thus, the actual percentage of match between the manual and the PCOS count for all of the presidential candidates is only 40%."

To mislead appears to be the actual intention of the Smartmatic report. In other words, this has to be a deliberate deception.

It should be stressed that the miserable performance of the Smartmatic machine occurred in what, by any definition, was merely a simple marketing demo under ideal conditions, not a real product test. If their carefully chosen machine cannot meet specifications under ideal conditions, how can their run-of-the-mill machines meet these under actual (and non-ideal) field conditions?

A real product test would consist of a full-blown hardware and software evaluation by technical experts in computer performance and system security. The multi-sector citizens’ election monitoring group AES Watch, in several letters to the Commission on Elections, asked that Comelec "allow Filipino IT computer security experts to do end-to-end and top-bottom TESTING of the PCOS system" and not let Smartmatic get away with "mere marketing demos of their product." AES Watch complains that Chairman Brillantes is doing nothing about this request. They say that "instead of creating a committee which would allow the full participation of the Filipino IT community in the testing of the system for fraud, the Comelec is creating a ‘grievance committee’ and nothing else." They consider this "a big insult to the intelligence of the Filipino IT practitioner and election watchdogs."

AES watch correctly points out that Mr. Brillantes’s new grievance committee is only a poorer version of the Comelec Advisory Committee of technical experts whose recommendation not to purchase the flawed Smartmatic system Mr. Brillantes and his fellow commissioners have already pointedly ignored.

So why does Chairman Brillantes and his complicit fellow commissioners continue to resist the idea of a comprehensive product test of the Smartmatic automated election system? With the clear failure of the Smartmatic machines "demo-ed" last July 24-25 to perform as per required specifications, plus the subsequent fudging of figures in the August 3 report on the demo, this refusal takes on a sinister meaning.

One leading industry practitioner laments, "It’s obvious that Comelec is just stonewalling and unwilling to let the Filipino IT community be involved. Comelec is not being transparent. Also, in the way it justified its decision upholding the legality of Comelec’s purchase of the Smartmatic PCOS machines, it seems that the Supreme Court was even lawyering for Comelec. It’s disgusting, frustrating, infuriating. I don’t know how we can continue to stomach this nonsense." The Filipino people should be disgusted, frustrated, and infuriated as well.