Commission on Elections Chairman Sixto Brillantes speaks and behaves as of he were Moses. He wants us to stop questioning the integrity of Smartmatic and its Automated Election System (AES) and Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

Just because he’s supposed to be a pillar of virtue—a supposition largely derived from his having been among the most unremitting critics of the vastly hated former President Gloria Arroyo—he wants to shut up those who are anxious about the vulnerability to corruption of and the presence of bugs in Smartmatic’s PCOS machines.

As if he had been to Mt. Sinai and received his instructions from God Himself as Moses did, Chairman Brillantes wants us, who love our country enough to worry about making our election results accurate and true reflections of how the electorate voted, to pipe down and stop doubting that the 2013 elections using the 82,000 Smartmatic PCOS machines will be free of problems.

He wants us, in other words to be like him, and take the assurances of the Smartmatic corporation’s officials. We are but the lowly Israelites and Chairman Brillantes has heard the word of God directly from Smartmatic’s Mr. Cesar Flores.

To him, we are so tiresome, we who want to be assured that the suit Smartmatic filed against its software supplier, Dominion Voting Systems, in the Delaware Chancery Court in America, will not screw up our 2013 election.

We are not lawyers, Chairman Brillantes tells us, so we don’t know what we are talking about, even if our researchers have communicated with and received proper replies to our questions from Dominion officers. We are not lawyers, like Chairman Brillantes himself, so we should just quit pestering him and Smartmatic with questions.

The trouble is that in Smartmatic’s own suit in Delaware against its former software supplier, Dominion, the Venezuelam corporation says that Dominion did not give it the proper source code that Dominion should have given and placed in escrow, through the escrow service provider Iron Mountain. In other words, Smartmatic is saying in its legal claim against Dominion that it was a wrong source code that was deposited with the central bank—as part of the contractual arrangement for which the Philippines paid billions to Smartmatic— before the May 2010 elections.

Chairman Jose Melo and Smartmatic discs
It was not Chairman Sixto “Moses” Brillantes who was the head of the Comelec then. Chairman Jose Melo was the Comelec head involved in depositing two compact discs from Dominion that were supposed to contain the software for Smarmatic’s PCOS machines. Chairman Melo was so proud of the two cd’s—and he is still so proud of them today. He speaks of them as if they were the Holy Tablets of the Ten Commandments which God’s power inscribed.

For this special report, Chairman Melo told The Manila Times the Comelec’s IT department, technical committee and other government officials checked the source code before placing it in the box sealed with Comelec stickers at all the sides.

We and others asked in 2010 how Chairman Melo and the experts and officials checked the source code of the PCOS machines’ software. Did they read it and try it before it was sealed and deposited with the Bangko Sentral?

No they did not. None of them knew how to read the source code and verify its authenticity and correctness.

Now we know from Smartmatic’s own filing with the Delaware Chancery Court that Smartmatic knew it was not the correct software because Dominion never gave the correct software to them.

Former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman, who left the Comelec in disgust because his opinions and knowledge as an IT expert—he is the only Comelec Commissioner who knew in depth about software and source codes—suspects that the cds deposited with the Bangko Sentral are either fake or stolen from Dominion or another Dominion client.

He had always been skeptical of the Smartmatic system even when he was still a Comelec official because the Venezuelan company would not let the source code of its PCOS machine system be tested by him and his group and other Filipino experts demanding to see and test the source code.

Now his suspicions—and those of AES Watch, CenPEG and scores of other Filipino election watchdogs—have been confirmed.

Other problems of the Smartmatic PCOS machines
The effect on Smartmatic’s ability to fix its PCOS machines’ problems because it has no proper software from Dominion is not the only problem.

There are also, among others, the following:

The PCOS machines have a console port that allows for access by anyone who wants to get at the operating system. Has Smartmatic solved this—sealed that prohibited port in all the 82,000 machines?

Has Smartmatic improved its system by including a digital signature that will allow identification of the source of transmitted results? The absence of this digital signature is the basis of many claims of fraud in the 2010 election.

Will the PCOS machines—their ultraviolet sensors disabled or not functioning—still accept non-security ballot paper as in the 2010 election. This is the basis of proved claims that actual security-paper ballots were thrown away and replaced with pre-filled ordinary paper ballots which the PCOS machines counted.

Will the 82,000 PCOS machines stamp the wrong time and date as they did in 2010? The wrong dates make auditing difficult if not impossible.

Has Smartmatic corrected all the bugs that caused glitches in the 2010 elections?

There are scores more of questions that remain unanswered.

If these are left unattended to, the people could be made to feel that the powers that be—in Malacañang, the ruling parties’ allies in Congress and in the Comelec—are engaged in a conspiracy with Smartmatic to control Philippine election results forever and ever.