Philippine poll body reacts to voting ‘breaches’

The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi on Monday evening released through its Facebook Page a press statement from the Manila-headquartered Commission on Elections (COMELEC), concerning alleged irregularities, encountered by overseas Filipino voters (OFVs) in other countries, in connection with the historic implementation of the overseas online voting (OOV) relative to the April 13 to May 12 General/MidTerm Elections.

It was on early Monday morning when Gulf Today read over Facebook about the alleged alterations done on the cast votes of at least two supporters of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Roa Duterte and his daughter, incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio.

By mid-afternoon, a Filipino residing in The Netherlands sent a Facebook post about the “Ano ito Comelec” (What is this Comelec?) rant of an unidentified OFV posted by a certain “Abines Ernesto Jr.,” reposted by a certain “Leonar Maria”: “Duterte Candidates binoto ng isang OFW. Pero Sotto, Pacquiao, Tulfo, Brosas at Bosita lumabas! Ano ito Comelec?”

The Filipino-worded three-page COMELEC statement, in particular referred to the post, spreading like wildfire on Facebook, of a certain “Jefferson Salazar Bonoan” based in Singapore, shared by a certain “Kiffy Chu.”

In response, the COMELEC, which pointed out that the Facebook post, carried as well the “specific official digital ballot of the complainant, before this was cast, and screenshots of the series of scripts, stated:

• The Online Voting Counting System (OVCS) immediately encrypts the vote cast by the Registered Overseas Voter, into the digital ballot. This guarantees the cast vote against interception, tampering, or un-authorised access.

• After casting the vote, an OFV has the chance to review his ballot, using his Ballot Identification (BID), with the use of an industry-standard secured storage and verification ‘plaintext hash’. The code is the plaintext version of the ballot itself. Scrolling from start to finish would show all of the senatorial and party-list representative candidates that includes all of the “encrypted votes” of the OFV.

Therefore, the OFV sees and reads the encrypted script of the names of all the candidates and not only the names of the candidates he voted for. This method prevents anyone to see and know who was voted by any OFV. This method disallows anyone to take a photo of the ballot which is employed by the OVCS, to obviate any form of vote-buying or vote-selling.

COMELEC likened the method implemented in the automated counting machine whereby the Voter’s Receipt could neither be brought outside of the polling precinct nor taken a photograph of, for vote-buying or vote-selling.

The BID and Ballot Locator, containing the encrypted script, is an irreplaceable and permanent record of the ballot. This is proof that the OFV successfully cast his vote and his votes have been counted correctly.

Lastly, after the elections and the canvassing of votes, the permanent encrypted script is going to be used for a three-way transparency and audit:

• Through the print-out of all the canvassed ballots in all the 77 Philippine embassies and consulates general where the OOV is implemented.

• Through the use of the Election Verifier System that confirms or validates each ballot received for the Election Returns, and which determines the accuracy and authenticity of the results.

• Through the legislated Random Manual Audit whereby any of the 77 Philippine posts are going to manually count the ballots and print out the final numbers to be compared to the transmitted Election Returns.

COMELEC is bound to secure the sanctity of the ballot and so Filipinos, specifically all OFs, must not worry amidst the widespread distribution of unverified reports over the social media concerning the genuineness of the OOV, according to the statement.