Electile dysfunction

Electile dysfunction

By Marvyn Benaning

Vantage Point II

THE now-controversial Harvard Prof. Alan Morton Dershowitz, a constitutional lawyer, used this neologism in his book “Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for Unaroused Voters” in  2016  to “help” American voters navigate the perilous route of US elections and choose between candidates who either manipulate voters and those who lie through their teeth.

Jon Stewart used the same term to repeat the tragedy of US voters who are now constrained to vote for a man of high emotional intelligence but a proven conman and pathological liar, or choose a more than avuncular leader who is aging and couldn’t cure his stutter. At least in the US, there have been rare cases of election fraud, but here in the Philippines? It is the rule rather than the exception. The greater fraud is the election of clowns and madmen in the legislature.

With the midterm elections barely a year away and a new supplier of voting counting  machines (VCMs), the South Korean company Miru Systems, getting a huge contract to handle the elections, IT experts and scientists belonging to the Laban sa Scammers-Kabalikat sa Infotech at Agham (LABS KITA) led by its president Dr. Lex Muga are demanding complete transparency in the next electoral exercise.

Dr. Muga has called for a scrutiny of the award made by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) favoring Miru Systems and urged that the Comelec to include the mandatory inclusion of digital signatures in all the transmissions of poll results and not merely the VCM-generated digital signatures. The professor wants the digital signatures to come from election officials at the precinct level to ensure that the results were not machine-generated. Such signatures confirm that the precinct results were not altered.

His plea may fall on deaf ears as a Supreme Court (SC) decision promulgated in June 2023 but spent seven months in transit dismissed an earlier plea for the Comelec to use digital signatures in the 2022 presidential elections, as what Republic Act No.  8436 (RA 8436), or the Automated Election System Law, requires. SC said the digital signatures of the VCMs are sufficient compliance to the provisions of RA 8436. Nonetheless, the High Court said the adoption of another method to digitally sign the election returns up to the Comelec. “Petitioners are not entitled to a writ of mandamus to compel the Comelec to implement the use of digital signatures since it is not a ministerial duty of the Comelec,” the decision stressed.

Nonetheless, the SC ruled that Comelec may be compelled to disclose the complete transmission diagram and data or communications network architecture of the VCMs. “As the VCM transmission diagrams are matters of public concern and interest, they should be made available by the Comelec, especially considering that unauthorized transmissions and communications to and from network nodes plotted in the diagram or architecture may call into question the integrity of the elections,” the decision concluded.

Dr. Muga and LABS KITA should not be discouraged and must persist in demanding that Comelec compel Miru Systems to show that it can allow digital signatures of election officials in all the poll results. By including the signatures of election officials in the precinct results, the same results can be confirmed and proven to be genuine.

This early, Dr, Muga and LABS KITA should pursue their advocacy to exorcise the errors of past elections handled by Smartmatic. Miru Systems has been criticized as well for the conduct of the elections in the Congo, Iraq and Argentina, from voter IDs to glitches that forced manual recounts. The South Korean company was drowning in red ink before it hit the jackpot just less than 10 years ago. It is better to make sure that Miru Systems will be transparent rather than opaque, like the terms of its contract in the Congo. As to the SC decision that made it easier to cheat, the fact of the matter is that when the High Court errs, it becomes part of the law of the land.