Vote-shaving possible in PCOS machines, poll watchdog warns

Contrary to the government's assurance that "automated cheating" is virtually impossible, the glitches that occurred in recent precinct-level tests showed there is an easy way to shave votes from target candidates in the May 10 elections, a poll watchdog group said on Thursday. In a statement, Halalang Marangal (HALAL) said votes can be shaved off certain candidates by making minor changes in the configuration of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that would be used to count and transmit votes during election day. According to HALAL secretary-general Roberto Verzola, the current problem with PCOS machines is that there was a mismatch between the PCOS configuration and the ballot layout for local candidates, thus preventing the machines from accurately counting votes during pre-election testing last Tuesday. The ballot layout for the local candidates was changed from single-spaced to double-spaced, but the configuration was not changed to account for the new locations of the double-spaced ovals, said Verzola. “Smartmatic simply needs to adjust the coordinates of the ovals for the local candidates, to conform with the modified ballot layout, to correct the misalignment. This will require changing the configuration file containing the coordinates. I agree that, properly done, this would solve this particular problem," he said. But Verzola, an information technology expert who had made an extensive study of the 2004 and 2007 elections and vote-rigging schemes, warned that this option to change the PCOS configuration file could be "exploited" to do targeted cheating through vote-shaving. “All that needs to be done is to slightly change the coordinates of the oval associated with a targeted candidate, so that the printed oval on the ballot for that candidate becomes slightly misaligned with respect to the new coordinates on the configuration file. The larger the misalignment, the greater the possibility of missing the mark on the oval – this is called a false negative or a 'bawas'," he said. "Of course, the cheat would not make such a big change that the PCOS machine will miss the mark entirely – a consistently zero count would be too obvious and easily detected. But a slightly misaligned oval might be missed occasionally, say one in every ten marks, leading to a 10 percent shaving of votes for that particular targeted candidate," added Verzola. Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal assured, however, that the Comelec is taking the necessary measures to ensure that the machines would read votes accurately. "We have a retesting and resealing of the PCOS machines. I think that would provide us with the answer whether the PCOS machines would read the votes accurately," he told GMANews.TV. Poll officials earlier said the PCOS machines retested on Thursday in Metro Manila accurately read the ballots that were not read properly during the first testing earlier this week.—With reports from Nikka Corsino/JV, GMANews.TV