Fraud marks the spot FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 05/31/2010

Fraud marks the spot

FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 05/31/2010 Any which way one cuts it, the automated elections were marked by electronic fraud. There were just too many things that went wrong--all suspected to be deliberate, all of which are being discovered today, and quite frankly, neither the Commission on Elections (Comelec) officials nor Smartmatic itself have come up with credible and satisfactory answers, thinking perhaps that the Filipinos are so stupid and can be fed with technical gobbledygook. The facts are that there are many unexplained and even unjustified moves made by the Comelec and its partner, Smartmatic, such as, but not limited to, not following the conditions set forth by the US certification firm, to make the program fraud-free. And for that inspection of the program and system by SysTest Lab, which the Filipino people paid millions for the service, Comelec and its tech partner never bothered to correct the flaws as pointed out by the certification agency, which means that the program and system used for the 2010 presidential polls, were never certified by SysTest. But what was most suspicious of all was the fact that some three days before the scheduled polls, where only some 2,000 machines failed the testing, Comelec and Smartmatic suddenly pulled out all 82,000 compact flash (CF) cards, ordered 82,000 cards from Hong Kong and Taiwan, reconfigured all these in just two to three days, with claims that all these reconfigured CF cards were tested and delivered to all the clustered precincts, all 76,000 of them throughout the Philippine archipelago. This tale from the Comelec and Smartmatic officials is full of holes. It is impossible to, first, order and ship from abroad 82,000 CF cards, then reconfigure these in just a time frame of two days, then have these tested — and without any party representative to witness and check the reconfigured CF cards — and then have what, another day to deliver all these to the “right” precincts all over the Philippines. Not having any witnesses from political parties for the testing certainly was pretty sneaky.... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100531com2.html

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