NAMFREL

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Filipino I.T. community pickets Comelec against

March 19, 2011
from NAMFREL Election Monitor Vol.2, No.4

Leaders of the Filipino I.T. community, comprising the AESWatch (Automated Election System Watch) Coalition, picketed in front of the Comelec headquarters in Intramuros, Manila on March 17, to protest the Comelec's continued engagement with Venezuela's Smartmatic company and the planned use of its defective PCOS counting machines for the ARMM elections scheduled for August.

"Post-election studies and investigations including those of the 14th Congress found the Smartmatic’s PCOS technology as being, among others, fraught with technical breakdowns, transmission failures, a big number of disenfranchised voters – from 4-7 million – and the number of election protests (many automation-related) bigger than in previous manual elections. We are now more certain that the Smartmatic’s election system is inherently flawed and, if used again, will further compromise the overarching needs for accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness in elections," a statement from AESWatch reads. "The Comelec continues to turn a blind eye to the fact that Smartmatic can never comply with Philippine laws because it is another foreign company - Canadian and US-based-Dominion Voting Systems - that owns and can solely decide to release or not for independent review of political parties and interested groups, the election computer program including the source code."

AESWatch recommends that the Comelec adopts the manual system of voting and counting for the ARMM election since only three positions will be voted for in the five provinces of the ARMM. "'Cheap price, as peddled by Smartmatic in convincing Congress and Comelec to buy 5,000 PCOS machines for the ARMM elections should not be a substitute to accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness. Election is a sovereign political exercise that cannot be held hostage to marketing strategy especially by a foreign consortium."

Read AESWatch's full statement here:
http://bit.ly/fqAx7m

See photos from the picket here:
http://on.fb.me/hPkLmd

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