Comelec opens May polls source code for public review

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections has opened the source code used in the May national elections to public review.                                                       

“We conducted a source code review and we made the procedure open to the public,” said Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal.                    

The Supreme Court recently ordered the Comelec to disclose the source code used in the Automated Election System.                                                     

The ruling grants the petition filed by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg) to conduct an independent review of the source code or human readable instructions.              

Cenpeg had argued that the source code should be made public because the conditions for non-disclosure of the source code had lapsed.              

The Court agreed and added that the source code must be disclosed because of numerous admissions of error and claims of fraud.  

In a statement issued yesterday, Cenpeg said the decision “vindicates” its position for the early release of the source code.                                  

“The release and independent review of the source code will help explain many technical glitches and errors in the system which, to this day, remain unanswered,” said Cenpeg information technology consultant Lito Averia.                                        

He said an independent review of the source code would show if the Comelec and its contractor Smartmatic International Corp.-Total Information Management Corp. have complied with election laws.

The source code is the software dictating the operation of the precinct count optical scan machines used to count the votes in the last elections.                                                                 

The source code will change if the system had been hacked.                                               

Larrazabal said Cenpeg and representatives of political parties were invited when the source code was reviewed last February.                                    

He said Cenpeg was not present during the actual review but did attend the preliminary hearings on how the review should be conducted.        

Larrazabal said the Comelec would follow the Court ruling but said there has to be guidelines in the independent review of the source code.    

“There has to be guidelines. You cannot just do it without boundaries, no procedures,” he said.