Press Statement by Halalang Marangal (HALAL), April 17, 2010
Misaligned UV marks: can the ovals be misaligned too?
The Comelec and Smartmatic have acknowledged disabling the
ultraviolet (UV) scanning feature of the PCOS, because the
machine is unable to read the ballot UV mark reliably.
They claimed it was a misalignment problem. Due to the
high-speed printing, the UV mark on the ballot was “misaligned
by one to two millimeters”, they said. So the machine's UV
scanner couldn't detect the mark reliably and the PCOS was
rejecting an inordinate number of valid ballots.
The Comelec kludged a last-minute solution: buy 76,000 UV lamps,
and ask election inspectors to shine a lamp on each ballot to
determine whether it is authentic or not. As is typical with
last-minute solutions, this one was not carefully thought out.
If cheats can print fake ballots, they can get UV ink and print
UV marks on their fake ballots too. If machines specifically
designed for this purpose cannot reliably distinguish between
authentic and fake ballots, can teachers on one-day duty as
election inspectors do any better?
The misalignment problem actually raises a bigger concern. If
the UV mark can be misaligned due to the high-speed printing,
then for exactly the same reason, the ovals can be misaligned
too!
Now, this can be a very serious problem. If the ovals are
misaligned, then the marks made by voters when shading these
ovals will be misaligned too. Then, just as the PCOS UV scanner
could not read reliably the UV mark, its main scanner would be
unable to reliably read the voters' choices too.
This is a very, very serious problem.
According to Comelec specifications, the PCOS should have less
than five errors for every 100,000 marks (.005%). That means one
error for every 589 ballots, assuming 34 marks per ballot (one
mark for president, one for vice, twelve for senators, etc.).
The Comelec has not even released test statistics which show
that the Smartmatic machines meet this specification, if fed
with perfectly aligned properly shaded ovals.
With misalignment, two types of error can creep in: a false
positive means registering a vote/mark that is not there; a
false negative means missing a vote/mark that is there. As the
misalignment gets worse, both errors can shoot up.
Even worse, the Comelec has also removed the only means by which
voters themselves, on election day, can detect this problem.
Originally, after scanning a ballot, the PCOS would first
display the voter's choice on its screen, giving him a chance to
verify if his choices were correctly registered by the machine.
The voter can then choose to cast his ballot or to abort and try
again. This real-time audit by voters is in fact required by the
Automated Election Law (Section 7n): “Provide the voter a system
of verification to find out whether or not the machine has
registered his choice.” Note carefully: the law
specifies “choice”, not “vote”. Foolishly (diabolically, others
might say), the Comelec ordered the machine reconfigured and
this real-time audit disabled. Now, the machine simply thanks
voters and informs them that their vote has been registered,
without actually displaying those choices. The Comelec has, in
affect, blindfolded voters while the machine is registering
their choice.
With printing misalignments, we are stuck with a system that may
falsely register voters' choices, without voters knowing it.
This is far worse than a PCOS that stops working or rejects
valid ballots, problems which are apparent at once. An
inaccurate PCOS will keep scanning and counting happily, with no
indication or warning that it is miscounting votes. This puts
the very rationale for spending billions on automation, the very
core of the whole democratic process of selecting our leaders,
at risk.
This is not speculation. Similar problems had also happened in
early Comelec pilots of optical scanning. According to a 1998
report posted on the Comelec website entitled “Partial
Automation of 1998 National and Local Elections”, Sulu ballots
were recounted at the PICC “due to an error in NPO's printing
procedure”. Likewise, Lanao del Sur ballots were recounted
manually “also due to errors in printing of the ballots.”
According to a former Comelec official, these printing errors
were in fact misaligned ovals.
The Comelec and Smartmatic first mentioned the printing problem
when they explained why the PCOS UV scanner was disabled. The
high-speed printing was causing the misalignment, they said.
Indeed, printers confirm that at high speeds, the print
alignment may go awry. There can be a number of causes, one of
which is the stretching of the paper itself. Thus, careful print
operators may stop their machines occasionally, to check what
they call the “registration marks”, readjust, and restore the
print alignment. Misalignment is a common printing problem, and
good operators know how to correct it.
We have now come to one root cause of the various problems that
have beset the automated election project. The misalignment of
the UV mark, including presumably the ovals, occurred because
ballot printing is being done in a hurry. In the haste,
operators of the printing machines are not being given a chance
to stop the machines occasionally to check for alignment. The
occasional machine stops will delay the ballot printing and lead
to missed deadlines. The Comelec had insisted on printing
ballots even on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday – not even a
half-day pause. This meant that the slightest delay could derail
the whole project.
Is it any wonder why the UV misalignment problem has gone on,
uncorrected?
As of April 13, according to a Comelec announcement, some 41.7
million ballots had been printed. In many of these ballots, the
ovals might be misaligned, like the UV marks were. Hence, many
of the voters' choices may not be correctly registered on the
PCOS.
The Comelec is now reaping the consequences of violating the law
and using a machine that has neither been piloted nor used
widely. The SAES 1800 has never been piloted in the Philippines,
as Section 6 of the Automated Election Law requires: “... the
AES shall be used in at least two urbanized cities and two
provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.” Nor has it been
used widely in any other country, as Section 10 of the law also
requires: “... the system procured must have demonstrated
capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral
exercise here or abroad.” These violations of the law were
questioned before the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the
GMA-appointed justices supported the Comelec's stubborn
insistence to use the Smartmatic machine, reinforcing the
Comelec's sense of impunity in violating provisions of the law.
Had the Comelec and the Supreme Court been more respectful of
the law, the problem would have been noticed early. Then we
would not have put the entire national elections at risk, as
they have done today.
This problem clearly calls for thorough testing of both PCOS and
ballots for misalignment and accuracy in scanning. The tests
must be done not by Smartmatic, but by independent third
parties, say, the DOST, and witnessed by all stakeholders. We at
HALAL, for one, want observe these tests very closely.
If careful testing shows that the PCOS cannot reliably read
properly shaded but misaligned ovals, then no hand-held lamp can
help us. We may have no choice but to manually count the votes
again, ballot by ballot.
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Contact: Roberto Verzola, Secretary-General, Halalang Marangal
(HALAL), 0929-856-1930
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