THE Supreme Court (SC) denied the plea of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to be given more time to answer the petition filed by former Sen. Richard Gordon seeking to compel the poll body to issue receipts for votes cast during the May 9 elections.
At a media briefing, SC Spokesman Theodore Te said the Court denied the Comelec’s motion during its regular en banc session on Tuesday, and decided to maintain their earlier order for the poll body to respond to the motion within five days.
“The Court denied respondent Comelec’s motion for extension of time to submit comment. The Court’s order of February 23, 2016, gave respondent Comelec an inextendible period of five days within which to comment,” Te said.
It will be recalled that, in his petition for mandamus, Gordon, who is also running for the Senate in this year’s elections, said the poll body should implement Section 7 (e) of Republic Act (RA) 9369, or the automated election law, which states that the Voter Verification Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is one of the minimum systems capabilities of the automated-election system and a major security feature of the vote- counting machine.
Gordon noted that the VVPAT allows every voter to confirm whether the machine cast the vote correctly based on the choice of the voter, thereby ensuring the integrity of the elections.
He pointed out that VVPAT is a “critical and indispensable” security feature of the automated-voting machine, one that the Comelec must implement.
Gordon said the Comelec must not be allowed to violate the law, as it has done so in the 2010 and 2013 elections, adding that this is one of the reasons there are those who questioned the credibility of the automated-election system, owing to the failure of the poll body to implement the safeguards, such as presenting the source code for review and disabling the use of digital signatures.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said the poll body has decided against printing the receipt, because it might be used for vote- buying, and that it would result to the vote-counting process being extended from six to seven hours, since it takes about 13 seconds to print a receipt, meaning each machine would have to run for that long for the receipts.
Gordon hits back at Macalintal
THE main author of the landmark election automation law, comebacking Sen. Richard Gordon, hit back at election lawyer Romulo Macalintal on Tuesday for saying the law did not mandate the issuance of receipts to voters.
Gordon, who last week filed a petition asking the SC to compel the Comelec to activate the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) for the May 9 elections, said Macalintal should check his facts before dishing out “selective arguments.”
Gordon was reacting to Macalintal’s published reaction, criticizing Gordon for filing a “misleading and speculative petition.”
The former senator, who once also chaired the Congressional Oversight Committee on Poll Automation, drew attention to RA 9639’s Sections E, F and N, governing the required documentation and verification system after the country scuttled manual elections.
“Depriving voters of a chance to verify through a receipt if their votes were accurately reflected means you are asking them to put their full and exclusive trust in a machine which can be monkeyed around with,” Gordon told the BusinessMirror.
The issue here, he added, “is guaranteeing the integrity of the polls, and letting people have full confidence in the outcome of the elections.”
This will be crucial, Gordon stressed, in ensuring political stability, especially in light of indications this will be a tight race. “If a winner is declared on a small margin, imagine how hard it will be to assure people that the vote is clean, especially if they don’t have receipts and were forced to blindly trust the machines.”
At the same time, Gordon observed that the Comelec never even activated the onscreen verification, which is now being touted as a possible replacement for VVPAT.
He pointed out that the law contemplates receipts, a paper audit trail, and it is time to enforce that, lamenting that it was taken lightly along with other security features in the 2010 and 2013 elections.
Gordon shot down arguments that a paper trail would invite vote buying, noting the hypocrisy of those who say people should be forced to trust the system enough without demanding receipts while, at the same time, accusing them of being a party to vote-buying.
The comebacking senator also noted that the earlier SC decision being cited by Macalintal was rendered even before the country held its first automated elections in 2010.
He noted that in 2010, neither the VVPAT nor onscreen verification was activated. That year the Comelec was also blasted by critics for also failing to put into action a source-code review and for not compelling its watchdog, the Parish Pastoral Center for Responsible Voting, to seriously carry out the random manual audit in timely fashion as required by law.
To buttress his argument, Gordon further cited specific requirements in the law which mandates “provision for voter verified paper audit trail; system auditability which provides supporting documentation for verifying the correctness of reported election results; and, provide the voter a system of verification to find out whether or not the machine has registered his choice.”
source: Business Mirror
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