The House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms has asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to submit at least 21 poll documents withheld from election watchdog groups amid a Supreme Court (SC) ruling. On Monday, Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga, committee chairman, approved the motion of Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño to request the Comelec to provide copies of the documents. The documents being requested are:
Smartmatic-Comelec contract with the complete annexes; finance and budget plan of the AES-Smartmatic; copy of the Smartmatic Voters’ Education contract; contract between Smartmatic and the Dominion Voting Systems; contract on transmission and deployment plan of the transmission facilities; report on the PCOS transmission on May 10 and thereafter; report on the customization; old ballot faces (national and local) matching the faulty CF cards; new ballot faces (national and local) actually used for the May 10 elections; report on the training of BEIs and technicians; -inventory of compact flash cards used in the final testing and sealing; the re-configured CF cards for May 10; SysTest full report; source code walkthrough plan; source code of the PCOS program; source code of the CCS programs; file formats of all data files used or produced by the PCOS program; file formats of all data files used or produced by the CCS program; public keys used by all the PCOS computers; public keys used by all the CCS computers; user manual of the PCOS program; and user manual of the CCS program; "(We should request) copies of the 21 documents allegedly withheld from the public so that we can do our own judgement," Casiño told the committee. Poll commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, who was present during the hearing, said he will relay the request to the Comelec en banc when they hold their meeting on Tuesday. Request thumbed down Election watchdogs such as the AES Watch and Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) have been requesting the Comelec for copies of the said documents but were always thumbed down. On June 3, a month after the 2010 elections, CenPEG once again asked the Comelec for access to the 21 public documents. However, on July 26, the Comelec en banc again denied the release of the document, saying these were for proper execution by the Project Management director, Atty. Jose Tolentino, Jr., who was earlier tagged in the controversial Secrecy Folder bidding. As early as May 2009 or one year before the automated elections, CenPEG has already been asking the Comelec for the release of the source code. CenPEG said the source code is the human-readable representation of the instructions that control the operations of all that the computer does — from counting, canvassing and storage of all data server machines used for elections. It is the master blueprint that reveals and determines how the machine will behave and if it follows Philippine election laws. The review of the source code by independent parties and interested groups, CenPEG said then, would reveal whether Comelec and its outsource partner, Smartmatic-TIM, were compliant with the election law. CenPeg explained that the source code would verify the integrity, accuracy, and security of the automated polls. CenPEG said as soon as the contract was signed in May 2009 between Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM for the outsourcing of the election technology for the May 10, 2010 polls, the source code was already deemed available. On June 24, Comelec en banc approved CenPEG’s letter of request to make available the source code for independent review. However, the poll body later flip-flopped and refused to release the source code claiming, among other reasons, that the source code has yet to be customized and then reviewed by “an established international certification entity" (US-based SysTest Labs). Thus, on October 5, 2009, CenPEG filed a petition for mandamus before the SC for the release of the election software . Review of source code In February 2010, the Comelec announced that the source code was available for review but CenPEG, along with other groups and political parties, refused to participate since the “review" was a mere “walk-through" held under stringent conditions and “controlled environment." CenPEG said a competent source code review usually takes at least four months. On September 21, the SC en banc granted CenPEG’s petition for mandamus and directed the Comelec "to make the source codes for the AES technologies it selected for implementation pursuant to RA 9369 immediately available to CenPEG and all other interested parties or groups for independent review." The SC upheld CenPEG’s citation of Section 12 of RA 9369, which provides that “once an AES technology is selected for implementation, the Commission shall promptly make the source code of that technology available and open … for review." The High Tribunal also disagreed with Comelec’s reason that the source code was not yet available when CenPEG sought for its disclosure or that the review should be done “under a controlled environment." In the resolution, the SC directed the Comelec to release to CenPEG and all interested parties: the source code of the PCOS (precinct count optical scan); the Board of Canvassers Consolidation Canvassing System, (BOC, CCS) programs for the municipal, provincial, national and congressional canvass; the Comelec server, and the source code of the in-house Comelec programs called the Data Capturing System (DCS) utilities. However, the Comelec insisted that the review should be in a controlled environment. "There was no denial of access to the source code but there were conditions. It may not be in accordance with what the people want," Larrazabal told the committee. Also during the hearing, Smartmatic's Cesar Flores reiterated his apprehension of making the source code public. "We do not want to lose control of who has possession of the source code," he said. He added that "we do not want to be copied by our competitors." – VVP, GMANews.TV 
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