MANILA - A group asked the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday to compel the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to reveal the source codes that will be used in the precinct counting machines to be used in the 2010 poll automation.

The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG), supported by the members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), educators, and some members of Congress filed the petition for mandamus before the high court.

In the 25-page petition, CenPEG, through its counsel Aquilino Pimentel III, said that it had not received the copy of the source codes for the counting and canvassing software for review despite constant follow-ups with the Comelec.

Dr. Pablo Manalastas, senior fellow and Information Technology (IT) consultant of CenPEG, said they filed the petition because they do not want a disaster to happen in the May 2010 polls.

Manalastas said the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines of Smartmatic-TIM has its weakness. One way to remedy this is to disclose and inspect the source code that would be used by the machines.

“The review will reveal if the software to be used is not prone to easy manipulation, vulnerable to malicious codes and bugs which may be used to corrupt the genuine will of the people,” Cenpeg said in its petition.

The IT expert also said people have a right to know how the machines that would scan, count, canvas the votes and transmit the precinct results would work.

Guard vs electronic rigging

Caloocan City Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez supported CenPEG’s action. He said that there could manipulation in poll automation, adding that the disclosure of the source code will help the public guard against this.

Various groups have called for an immediate review of the machine source code amid fears that the actual counting could be rigged electronically.

An earlier request by CenPEG for the release of the source codes was approved by the poll body in an en banc resolution issued in June.

Last August, Comelec said it will release the source code of the Smartmatic-TIM PCOS machines for review by political parties as well as an internationally-accredited body chosen by the Comelec.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said that under Republic Act 9369, or the Poll Automation Law, political parties and interested groups can review the source code to check the PCOS and Consolidation Canvassing System (CCS) programs.

Sarmiento said the poll body is still waiting for Smartmatic-TIM to turn over the source code so that it could be opened for review.

He said Smartmatic-TIM is contractually obligated to turn over the source code despite it being owned by Canada’s Dominion Voting Systems.

Last August, Manalastas said that both Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM are engaged in “delaying tactics."

He said this supports “our suspicion that the consortium may have only a binary-level license of the election programs, and our further suspicion that they do not have a source-level license, and so cannot produce the source code for our review.”

Manalastas, former chair of Ateneo de Manila University’s IT department and a lecturer at UP Computer Science, reminded the Comelec that it is mandated by the election modernization law to release the source code immediately.

“2-3 months audit”

The importance of the source code audit has previously been raised by a lawmaker.

Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said last August that IT experts would need at least 2 to 3 months to conduct a proper source code audit.

"The source code has to be reviewed now. If there is a defect, we cannot use it. If we find say, a line of code that says for every 100 votes for candidate A, put it to candidate B, that cannot be - dapat may changes. If we can't fix it in time, what will happen to the elections?" he asked.

He also cited various scenarios such as possible hacking during transmission of the results, and the invasion of computer viruses in the machines.

Other scenarios include "undetectable" tampering of the vote tallies by Smartmatic officers.

Colmenares voiced concern that the automated count would not be as transparent as the manual count since all the counting is done by the machine.

The Comelec will use 82,200 PCOS machines which will be used for the first time in the country in the 80,000 clustered precincts for the 2010 elections. With a report from Timi Nubla, ABS-CBN News