The Movement for Good Governance

March 12, 2011 Press Release MGG SUPPORTS COMPETITIVE PUBLIC BIDDING FOR 2013 AES; CALLS FOR DISQUALIFICATION OF SMARTMATIC-TIM The Movement for Good Governance (MGG), a coalition of reform advocates, joined the urgent call of various citizen groups for a more secure Automated Election System (AES) for the 2013 polls. MGG, through its Chair, Solita Winnie Monsod, expressed the view that Smartmatic-TIMs track record made entering into another contract with the technology provider simply unacceptable. The major technical and procedural lapses during the 2010 automated elections raise serious questions on the credibility of Smartmatic to secure its system against unauthorized network intrusions and unwitting loss of information, said Monsod. A repeat performance by Smartmatic would once again throw into question the integrity of election results. As responsible citizens of this country we cannot allow the voting results to be compromised. MGGs position is based on discussions with its affiliated organizations that were actively involved in monitoring the 2010 automated elections, namely: the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), TransparentElections.Org.Ph, AES Watch, the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), Tanggulang Demokrasya (TanDem), the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG), and Alyansa Agrikultura. MGG fully supports the recommendation of the Comelec Advisory Committee (CAC) to have a competitive public bidding for the 2013 AES. The Movement also backs the recommendations of the CAC calling for the adoption of following technical features in the 2013 AES which were not provided by Smartmatic in 2010 AES: 1. Use of standard and verifiable digital signatures for the machines and personnel and provision for accurate, reliable and universal time stamps;
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The Movement for Good Governance

2. Appropriately secured machine access facilities and forensics of the hardware; 3. Availability of on-screen voter verification of his/her vote; 4. Scanner should store the raw scanned date and provide ballot authentication feature, with printouts showing serial numbers, time stamps and unique machine identifiable features; 5. Source code and circuit schematics should be open for review, including audit logs. We should learn from the lessons of the past lest the vulnerabilities in the AES be used by some unscrupulous operators to manipulate the results of future elections, said Ma. Corazon Akol of TransparentElections.Org.Ph, who is also the President of the Philippine National IT Standards Foundation (PhilNITS). We sincerely hope the Brillantes Commision does not repeat the errors of the Melo Commision," added Ernest Ordoez, Chair of Alyansa Agrikultura. MGG and its affiliates believe that the Comelec should continue to explore a total solution meeting the basic technical requirements of accuracy, reliability, auditability and transparency decreed by the poll automation law. For more information, please contact Ms. Aissa Ereeta or Atty. Ginny de Guzman of the MGG Secretariat at 898-2617.

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