On Pinoy Politics, IT Audit and Internal Control

Is it just me or does anyone else find the anomalies in the PCOS machines downright suspicious?

Last Monday, several precinct count optical scan (PCOS) units failed to count votes accurately which forced Smartmatic, the government's contractor for the automated elections, to recall all compact flash cards and to halt scheduled delivery to Davao City and other provinces.

A news article in Manila Bulletin cited that the camp of mayoral candidate Lito Atienza noted that PCOS machines failed to read votes for the position of mayor in at least 80 percent of the tests. In Taguig, congressional candidate Angelito “Jett” Reyes claimed PCOS machines failed to read his votes and in Pateros, incumbent Pateros Mayor Joey Medina reported that half of the PCOS machines tested for the whole town printed incorrect results.

Smartmatic claims the glitches were caused by human error and dispels rumors that it was part and parcel of a plan to sabotage our national elections. To me, it's either the company's programmer is stupid or the glitches were indeed intentional. Even my brother, who majored in Computer Science, told me any ComSci freshman could have prevented errors as gross as those. I doubt that such a high-profile multinational company will hire an idiot, but what is unclear to me is why such irregularities were publicly committed on certain test-runs.

After the incident, The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) have recalled memory cards sent to 76, 300 precincts all over the archipelago and have allied with private corporations to deliver the replacement cards back to said precincts. Could it be that the original cards were properly configured and that the COMELEC or whoever it is behind the conspiracy(?) needed a valid excuse to allow them to recall the cards and replace them with cheated ones? Of course, this is just me overthinking things.

I am not a programmer or a systems analyst like my brother, but five years in accounting taught me that there is what we call an information technology audit. Similar to the financial statement audit which is what most of my classmates do in SGV, IT audit is a form of attestation engagement the main purpose of which is to evaluate a system's internal control design and effectiveness.

Tell me, has anyone audited the PCOS machines to be used on Monday? Anyone with an ISACA certification at all?

With news about the PCOS machines going hay-wire, I understand why Joseph Estrada urges the COMELEC to reconsider its position on parallel manual counting. In both automated count and manual count, the numbers should balance, so to speak. But with a history on dagdag-bawas, I think this form of internal control will never achieve its objective and will only add fire to the people's suspicion on vote-rigging.

I empathize with Bro. Eddie Villanueva when he called for a one-week poll postponement so that the COMELEC can address the PCOS anomalies. But not unless Bagyong Ondoy comes back to haunt us on Monday, I don't think the national elections will be delayed for any purpose other than force majeure.

Although I would have wanted a thorough IT audit to be done and made public, there just isn't any time for that. The national elections will push through. Yet for whatever technological excuse -- from glitches in the PCOS machines to a possible power outage in Mindanao -- if a failure of automation ensues, what difference will there be between that and a failure of election in the eyes of Filipinos who have grown jaded and suspicious after many years of poverty and corruption? After all, in a democratic country such as ours, the results of whichever election is just as good as the reliability of the electoral process itself.