Gov’t to save P12-B by using existing VCMs in 2025 polls
The Philippines cannot afford to become a “guinea pig” or testing ground for the “hybrid” election system — which is illegal, hence “dangerous and unnecessary” — to be rolled out by Miru Systems Co. Ltd. for the 2025 midterm elections, electoral reforms advocate and former Caloocan City representative Edgar “Egay” Erice said.
During the Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum on Wednesday, Erice raised all the red flags that will reverse the successful conduct of automated elections between 2010 and 2022, after the South Korean firm Miru Systems and its local partners — which have no experience in handling elections — bagged the record P18-billion contract to collect and count votes for next year’s national and local polls.
Erice said that using the Comelec’s existing VCMs would only cost the government P6 billion – or merely a third of the contract with Miru – to refurbish the machines. The P12 billion in savings generated could instead be used for other important government programs and projects like mass vaccination under the Department of Health (DOH), which reportedly lacked P3 billion in funds, Erice added.
For Erice, the Comelec still has more than enough time to scrap the deal and can use the over 93,000 vote-counting machines (VCMs) it earlier bought from Smartmatic for previous elections, which are still covered by warranty and spare parts provision until next year. Erice recently filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking to annul the Comelec-Miru contract, which he argued was not only “100-percent illegal” under Republic Act (RA) No. 9369 or the Automated Election Law but also very costly.
The former congressman, who had served on Congressional committees overseeing suffrage, electoral reforms, and automation, estimates that the Comelec spent a total of only P22 billion during the last five automated elections, which included the purchase of VCMs still in good condition, as the poll body attested to in its 2022 and 2023 post-election audits. The heftier price tag for a new contract was the reason why the Comelec later declared the VCMs it had bought from Smartmatic as allegedly no longer usable, Erice alleged. The Comelec also disqualified Smartmatic from bidding for the 2025 elections, which the Supreme Court last month ruled as a “grave abuse of discretion” on the part of the poll body, making Miru the lone bidder to snag the deal.
“The Comelec lied when it claimed that the VCMs acquired from Smartmatic were already unserviceable and dilapidated. It has become blind, mute, and deaf about these myriad issues involving its procurement and award to the controversial Miru and its inexperienced local partners. Why is that? It’s the P18-billion question,” said Erice.
Erice also pointed out that Miru’s plan to roll out a combination of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and Optical Mark Reader (OMR) automated counting machines is illegal, as RA 9369 mandates the election system to have been used in the country or other countries before rollout here. While DRE and OMR machines have been used as separate systems, they have never been jointly utilized, making the Philippines a guinea pig for this proposed two-in-one system.
“Using a prototype of a hybrid of two election systems is unnecessary and very dangerous. It risks privacy when casting votes as it will show on monitor screens the names selected by the voters. Worse, if the voters find any discrepancy, they don’t have a chance to change their votes anyway. These delays would likely eat precious time equivalent to about one minute per voter or an additional 16 hours of voting, which can also delay election results and the proclamation of winners,” Erice warned.
For Erice, this untested hybrid election system will ultimately lead to a surge in election-related violence, reversing the decline experienced since the first conduct of automated elections in the country back in 2010. Also, many other widely reported failed elections and corruption allegations had hounded Miru in the polls it had overseen in other countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Iraq, Erice noted.
Amid reports that Miru will integrate Microsoft (MS) Word and Excel applications in its hybrid vote-counting system, information technology (IT) expert Art Samaniego warned during the same forum that using third-party software not specifically designed for elections would make voting and counting votes vulnerable to hacking. “The Comelec should not allow the use of those software. It’s a concern in the cybersecurity community,” Samaniego said.
Samaniego likewise noted that only 0.15 percent of the over 107,000 VCMs used in the 2022 presidential election encountered glitches — much lower than the globally accepted standard of about 5 percent of machines malfunctioning in an election. “Filipino voters put their trust in automated elections given their fast results, and even election watchdogs as well as data scientists did not find any fault in them. Voters trust automated election machines more than they trust the Comelec — they themselves feed their ballots into the machines because they trust Smartmatic’s machines,” Samaniego said.
Erice also disclosed that Miru’s software systems had been developed by Russians, whose closest global ally, China, may “pose danger” to our election system amid an ongoing spat between Manila and Beijing over the West Philippine Sea.
For his part, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian supported addressing Erice’s “valid concerns” so that no foreign mercenaries can interfere by hacking or attacking the voting system to ultimately manipulate the results of next year’s elections. Gatchalian urged looking into the red flags raised by Erice “as early as now” to maintain the integrity of the 2025 polls. “The security features of our election system are important — it must be foolproof because there’s an incentive for other countries to interfere in and manipulate our elections. It’s faster to cast and count votes in an automated election, so the security system is important to address that risk,” Gatchalian said during the forum.
Erice challenged Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia to show the Supreme Court as well as legislators, who had expressed doubts about Miru, that the proposed system will work through a demonstration. The Comelec had snubbed calls for Miru to show the public the prototype of its proposed hybrid system despite calls from legislators and election watchdogs.
“The Comelec must prove to the Supreme Court that its contract with Miru is not illegal. But I can also prove that the Comelec-Miru deal is not only illegal but also very dangerous,” Erice said.
