star card-jan 26 update for jcoc

8/14/2019 STAR Card-Jan 26 Update for JCOC

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Automated Election System:

Updated as of January 26, 2010


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AES Watch Conveners

UP Alumni Association (UPAA); Center for People Empowerment inGovernance (CenPEG); National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA-CBCP),

Bishop Broderick Pabillo (CBCP) and Bishop Deogracias Yniguez (CBCP and

Ecumenical Bishops Forum / EBF); National Council of Churches in the

Philippines (NCCP); Dr. Reena Estuar, chair of AdMU Dept. of Information

Communications System; Dr. Jaime Caro, UP computer science & President,

Computing Society of the Philippines (CSP); Dr. Rachel Roxas, DLSU Collegeof Com uter Studies; Com uter Professionals Union CPU ; Association of

Major Reli

gious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP); Association of Schools

of Public Administrators (ASPAP); Philippine Computer Emergency Response

Team (PhCERT); Transparency International (IT-Philippines); National Union of

Students of the Philippines (NUSP); Engr. Rodolfo Jun Lozada; Health

Alliance for Democracy (HEAD); Senior Catholic Citizens Organization;Transparentelections.org; CCM; Coordinating Council for Peoples Development

(CPDG); Solidarity Philippines; Pagbabago (Movement for Social Change);

Council for Health & Development (CHD); Movement for Good Governance

(MGG); and others.


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AES Watch STAR Card

AES Watch is a network of concerned groups andindividuals monitoring the poll automation preparations.

AES Watch uses the System Trustworthiness,

Accountability, and Readiness Scorecard (STAR Card)

to assess the readiness and trustworthiness of the AES.

The STAR Card assesses 20 items of concern based on

available facts.

Each item is rated:

PASS

WARNING

DANGER

FAIL


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Categories of Concern

The 20 items of concern in the STAR Card aregrouped into 4 categories:

A. Setting up of the AES Will the AES be ready for full implementation by May 10?

B. Internal Systems and Trustworthiness Will the AES have the necessary safeguards to prevent fraud?

C. Personnel Training and Voters Education Will the teachers and the voters know fully what to do on May 10?

D. Contingency Plans

Will all concerned know what to do when things go wrong?

The country cannot afford a failure of elections!


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A. Setting Up of the AES

1. Timely delivery of hardware and softwarecomponents to Comelec

2. Quality of machines

3. Technology certification

4. Availability of transmission facilities. Deployment of machines

6. Physical security of machines

7. Precinct-specific ballots

8. Resource inventory at the voting centers

9. Adequate General Instructions

Will the AES be ready for full implementation by May 10?


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A. Setting up

1. Timely Delivery of AES Components

Will all components (software & hardware) of the AESbe delivered on time?

Has the supply of ballot boxes been contracted?

Individual configuration, testing, and certification of themac nes can e a ong an e ous process.

Delayed delivery of PCOS: only 32,000 of the 82,200

machines are with Comelec now.

Complete delivery of PCOS expected by Feb 21.No update seen on the supply of ballot boxes.

Rating: DANGER


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A. Setting up

2. Quality of Machines

Will quality assurance tests be completed in time tomeet other requirements dependent on such tests?

Passing the tests needed for technology certification

by Feb 10 (or 3 months before election day).

ballots fed in a test, only 30 were read properly.

Comelec admitted lack of manpower for testing.

Rating: DANGER


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A. Setting up

3. Technology Certification

Will the technology certification be completed by Feb10, the deadline set by AES Law?

Comelec reports that SysTest Labs of Colorado wascontracted for the certification in Oct 2009.

Comelec claims deadline will be met but no detailedprogress report has been disclosed.

What arrangements have been made to assure allstakeholders that the SysTest certified source code isthe one used for the programs actually installed in eachof the PCOS machines?

No arrangements for this have been reported yet.

Rating: WARNING


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A. Setting up

5. Deployment of Machines

Has Comelec prepared a plan that ensures

problem-free deployment of machines? Has a

contract been signed with an established logistics

company?

A. Setting up

5. Deployment of Machines

mac nes are prec nc spec c. rrors n

delivery can upset AES implementation.

Ballot boxes are expected to be quite bulky.

No update reported on the logistics arrangements.

Rating: WARNING


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A. Setting up

6. Physical Security of Machines

Are there adequate plans for ensuring all machines,including the CF cards, are protected from theft ortampering in their assigned locations?

The General Instructions specifies that political

arties are free to send their oll watchers to secure

the machines themselves but there is no clear

agreement yet as to how security is going to be done.

Rating: WARNING


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A. Setting up

7. Precinct-Specific Ballots

Will the ballots with pre-printed names of candidates

for specific localities be ready in time? What are the

logistics arrangements for deployment of ballots?

More than 1,600 ballot faces; fixed number of

ballots per clustered precinct; ballot packs are thus

precinct specific.

List of qualified candidates not yet finalized.

The scheduled ballot printing on Jan.25 postponed

for next week.

No update reported on logistics arrangements.

Rating: WARNING


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A. Setting up

8. Resource Inventory at Voting Centers

Are all the necessary resources availableat each of the voting centers, including:

Power supply and periods of operation?

IT-capable personnel for the BEIs and BOCs?

The site survey being conducted covers

only transmission; no mention on critical

facilities such as power and IT-enabledBEI personnel.

Rating: WARNING


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A. Setting up

9. Adequate General Instructions

Are adequate General Instructions (GI) for theconduct of automated elections ready?

GIs for BEIs on the Voting, Counting, and

Transmission of election results issued., ,

and Canvassing of Votes not finalized.

No response from Comelec about refinements ofthe GI as suggested by stakeholders, e.g., securityof private keys, canvassing, disposition of ballotsrejected by the PCOS, etc.

Rating: DANGER


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B. Internal Systems

& Trustworthiness of Results10.Source code

11.Verifiability of voting andresults at all levels of canvassing

12.Secured transmission of electionresu s

13.Initialization of machines

14.Manual audit of vote counts

Will the AES have the necessary safeguardsto prevent fraud?


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B. Internal Systems & Trustworthiness of Results

10. Source Code

Was the source code made available to interestedgroups for review as mandated by the AES Law?

No.

While the source code is said to be released on Feb 10,s a rea y oo a e o con uc a ser ous n epen en

review as provided for in Sec 12 of RA 9369.

Reliability and trustworthiness of the system put in

doubt.Rating: FAIL

Source code: human-readable set of computer programinstructions used to specify the internal actions to be performed

by the voting & canvassing machines.


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11. Verifiability of Voting and Results

Will voter be able to verify if machine has registeredhis chosen candidates as required by the AES Law?

No, function available in machine but disabled.

Will canvassers and watchers be able to easily verifye r g e ec on resu s are e ones ransm e o

the different levels of canvassing?

No clear provision on this as GI on canvassing has not

been released yet.Rating: DANGER


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12. Secured Transmission of Results

Will the teachers themselves individuallygenerate their password, hold it forsafekeeping, and use it for signing?

Rules silent about a lot of things re procedures/.

Rating: WARNING


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13. Initialization of Machines

Will the machines be required to show that thereare no votes or ballot images stored in the machinememory prior to voting?

No provision for this. Comelec reply to AES

pre-stored entries.

Rating: WARNING


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14. Manual Audit of Vote Counts

Will the random manual audit be done for asufficient number of precincts, by independentauditors, and before proclamation?

Sample size for the audit of one precinct per.and every municipality.

Audit will be done by the Random Manual AuditCommittee (RMAC) whose members are fromPPCRV which is part of the Comelec AdvisoryCouncil (CAC).

Rating: WARNING


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C. Personnel Training & Voters Education

15. Training of Technical Personnel

Will Comelec be able to train the teachers and other election personnel intime for the elections on both normal and contigency operations of theAES? Where are the training plans and materials? Who and how many will

be the trainors?

AES Law requires BEIs/BOCs to each have an IT-capable person.

Training for 230,000 teachers (BEI) to start March 1 instead of the originalJan. 20, about 2 months shorter time for trainin and certification. 76,340teachers must be DOST certified.

No indication if the continuity plan is covered in the training of teachers.

Reports show growing fear among teachers that this delay will leave theminadequately trained in operating the machine.

Will Smartmatic-TIM be able to recruit 45,000 competent techniciansneeded on election day? From where and how?

No report on this.

Rating: DANGER


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16. Stakeholder Education & Training

Will the voters have sufficient training and education on the AES intime for the elections?

Section 26 of RA9369 requires the Comelec, not later than 6 monthsbefore election, to undertake widespread stakeholder education andtraining.

Pulse Asia's October 2009 Nationwide Survey: 60% of Filipinos have.

SWS October 24-27, 2009 National Survey: half (49%) of adultssense that people power will happen if the 2010 elections fail; 47%fear the counting machines are vulnerable to sabotage; and only 44%trust the COMELEC to ensure the counting machines will not be

sabotaged.

Voter education is an enormous task.

No detailed plans reported for reaching out to rural and other remoteareas of the country.

Rating: DANGER


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17. Precinct Assignment of Voters

Will voters know ahead of time which clusteredprecinct to go to so as to avoid confusion anddelays on election day ?

The AES involves clustering of precincts.Ma orit of voters will likel have to o to new

polling places.

No update reported on the preparation of voterslist for each of the clustered precincts and on the

plan for informing voters of their new precinctassignments.

Rating: DANGER


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18.Continuity plan19.Electoral protest mechanism

20.Alternative election systemin some parts of the contry

Will the Comelec and all concerned knowwhat to do when things go wrong?


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18. Continuity Plan

Is Comelec ready with an adequate continuity plan that covers

all foreseeable eventualities?

RA9369 requires the development, provisioning, and

operationalization of a continuity plan to cover risks to the

AES at all oints in the rocess such that a failure of elections

whether at voting, counting or consolidation, may be avoided.

The continuity plan shown by Comelec so far appears to be

inadequate. Other eventualities such as natural disasters, civil

disturbance, failure of transmission facilities, hardware orsoftware failure at canvassing are not covered.

Rating: DANGER


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19. Electoral Protest Mechanism

Has Comelec identified the grounds for electoralprotests under the AES and defined the appropriateprocess for addressing and resolving such protests?

No specific legal provisions available for AES-. .,and visual appreciation of ballot shading,discrepancies in printed and transmitted results,appeal for recount, etc.)

No information from Comelec yet.

Rating: WARNING


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20. Alternative Election System

Are preparations being undertaken to implement amanual election system if full automation is no longerrealistic? How will this be done: manual counting,transmission, and canvassing? With traditional ballotsor re- rinted ballots?

No guidelines or procedures have been announced yetfor the conduct of manual elections where needed.

No clear criteria/ trigger points have been defined nordeadline set yet for determining whether to manualand in which localities.

Rating: DANGER


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STAR Card Assessment of the AES

As of Jan 15 As of Jan 26

PASS None None

WARNING 11 10

DANGER 8 9

FAIL 1 1

Overall the AES is in the DANGER zone.

Readiness of the AES is at risk due to the

pattern of delays and changes in the calendar.Trustworthiness of the AES is in question as

needed system safeguards are not yet in place.

star card-jan 26 update for jcoc

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