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PCOS Risks and Fraud

Opportunities

Manuel A. Alcuaz Jr.


The COMELEC – Smartmatic PCOS
has a lot of potential risks.
OMR Risks

The first set of risks are related


to the nature of voting.
Manual Voting

In manual voting one had to write the


names of candidates voted for.

This process takes time imagine writing


30 names each name having an
average of ten letters that is 300 letters
per ballot.
OMR Voting

In OMR voting you merely shade an


oval or mark it with an X or √. That is
like writing one letter per candidate.

The fake ballot preparation time is


down to 1/10.
Increased Fraud
This increases the danger of others marking a
voters ballot. Or the use of ballots of voters
who did not show up.

The ballot will not be stuffed since they are


fed into the PCOS machine.

But the ballots can be filled up by people who


are not the registered voters.

These danger is increased due to the


clustering of precincts. Lansadera is easier.
More!
The sad part is that in case of an election protest it
is hard to prove that one person filled up multiple
ballots.

The safeguards built into the machine like checking


if ballot belong to the precinct is useless. Because
the ballots to be used really belongs to the precinct.

If goons and guns are used OMR election fraud is a


breeze. One man can shade all the ballots!
Sabotage
I think that all these talk about failure of elections
is a smoke screen.

But sabotage can still be done selectively in order


to cheat.

In the old system unscrupulous candidates would


steal ballot boxes or disrupt election in precincts
where they were weak.

In 2010 they could selectively sabotage PCOS


machines by putting some form of glue on their
ballots. Or actually damaging the machine.
Fraudulent Counting Tables
(Programs)

There are many ways to be able to


manipulate the counting of votes in the
PCOS machines.

The danger, I would like to emphasize, is not


due to hacking. It would be thru insiders.
Source Review?
Let us look at the different layers of code in
a PCOS machine.
Application
Program (Table)

Application I/O
Generator Program

OMR File Mgt or


Program DBMS

Drivers

Operating System
(Linux)
Where cheating will not be
done!
If I were to cheat, I would not do it at the
following:

OS
Drivers
File Management/ DBMS
OMR Program
Application Generator
Where cheating would be
done
I would do it at the application table (program) and
I/O program.

I think that voting machine and OMR machine


vendors would have a program that is somewhat
similar to a subset of Excel to quickly generate
tabulation tables or programs.

Most people don’t look at the source code of Excel.


They review the specific Excel tables.

It is these tables and I/O programs that have to be


carefully checked.
Some Possibilities for
Cheating in PCOS Programs

There are a number of ways for an


insider to activate a program that will
manipulate the way a PCOS machine
counts.
COMELEC Safeguards
The COMELEC has provided for the following
safeguards:

1.USB sticks and passwords for BEI


2.test count before election day
3.sealing of machines
4.zeroing of counters before start of vote
5.PCOS machines only online after printing of
8 copies of ER

The above measures only provide protection


against external parties.
Insider Fraud

The bigger concern is the possibility of


COMELEC people and/or Smartmatic
technicians inserting malicious
programs to change the count.
Various Ways
The pre election audit can be surmounted by a number of
means. The counting program / table could contain two sets of
code. The honest code runs before Election Day. The malicious
code runs on election night.

Another alternative would be to have two totals. One is used


to print the ER’s another to transmit the ER’s.

Another possibility is to have + votes for preferred candidates


and negative votes in for other candidates.

The program that zeroes the counters does not zero the entire
memory.

It only zeroes the area that will be used to show zero votes at
the start. The counting will be done on another part of
memory, where the + and – votes are already stored.
What to ask for?

Let us insist on getting the application


and I/O code for each of the 1,630+
versions.

Pressure COMELEC on the source code


availability.

Let us get complete software and


hardware manuals for the PCOS
machines.
Hard to Guard

But with 82,200 machines how do we


make sure that only the honest code
goes to all 82,200 machines.
The best protection – 10%
Manual Audit
I think that the best way to probably have clean,
honest, and credible elections is to increase the
number of PCOS machines that should be audited by
a manual recount and that the selection be a
random sample.
One machine per district manual audit is too low.
We should target a manual recount of 10% of the
PCOS machines in each municipality, district, or city.
The identification of the machine should be random.
If we fail

If we don’t take these measures our 2010


elections may not be honest, fair, and
credible. They will most likely be quick and
dirty.

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