HOCUS PCOS 2010 Philippines

 by Ms. Grace Riñoza-Plazo

 (Ang Kapatiran 2010 Senatorial Candidate)



My dear Fellow Filipinos:

From the very beginning I knew it would take a miracle for me to win. I was ecstatic enough that I had the courage, the strength (I’m 62), and the opportunity to run for the Senate. I thought that the long- suffering and complaining Filipinos could perform a miracle. I believe in the Filipinos and in their capacity for greatness.

The miracle of a victory did not happen. Something else happened. A black magic against the Filipinos was performed. But the Lord would not allow it to take place without a little miracle in our favor- in the form of a concrete evidence of vote- shaving and vote- regrowing. It is a PCOS “ Voodoo” or PCOS “Shave & Regrow”.

I went to Congress to share this story at the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reform but I had some eerie feeling this story will just be buried among the countless stories of Filipino grievances.
I waited patiently for my chance to ask questions and clarifications from the Smartmatic representatives . When I presented my case, no Smartmatic representative was present. A  week before my schedule to question them, the Congress investigation was unceremoniously terminated.

Background

I am from Nasugbu, Batangas, residing in Quezon City. I ran for the Senate under Ang Kapatiran Party. The Nasugbu canvass of votes came out 2:35:55 a.m. of May 11. This is evidenced by the certified true copy of the Certificate of Canvass (COC) for Nasugbu. The Nasugbu canvass appearing at the ibanangayon.ph shows the correct results as follows:
                                           Nasugbu               Batangas
                                           Canvass                Canvass

President : JC de los Reyes - 54                         - 8
Vice : Jun Chipeco -               43                          - 7

Senators:

Tamayo:                               -606                        -156
David:                                  -568                         -154

Sison:                                   -421                        - 104
Imbong                                 -324                        - 213
Valdehuesa                           -157                         - 39
Tarrazona                             -138                         - 48
Riñoza-Plazo                     -11,894                        - 47

Ibangayon.ph is the website showing also the partial results like those from the cluster precinct. As of May 11, ibanangayon.ph was already showing the completed canvass of Nasugbu votes. As of 3:00 p.m. of May 12, the COMELEC National Canvass (election results.comelec.gov.ph) for the whole of Batangas was showing the shaved results ( appearing above opposite the Nasugbu figures for your easy configuration.

The votes of all AKP candidates were shaved; worst of all was mine—from 11,894 to a measly 47 votes. These computerized cheating by shaving or “bawas” was there for all to see at the websites : ibanangayon. ph and for the COMELEC national canvass at: electionresults.comelec.gov.ph. Both websites showing varying results were available until the afternoon of May 12, 2010 as evidenced by affidavits executed by AKP volunteer Administrative Staffs Jackie Losala and Joyce Solatre. AKP has it in soft copy.

When Ang Kapatiran saw the shaved Nasugbu results, our Presidential candidate JC de los Reyes withdrew his previous act conceding defeat. This withdrawal was prompted by the Nasugbu vote shaving –among the other election irregularities which were starting to surface.

The retraction by JC de los Reyes was all over the radio and television stations. Within a short period of time, Jackie Losala reported that the Comelec website could not be accessed. When it reappeared, electionresults.comelec.gov.ph has restored my missing votes—like magic; with the flick of a switch or a sleight of hand.

Notes:

The local municipal canvass such as that of Nasugbu is forwarded to the provincial canvasser such as Batangas only after the total votes had been canvassed in the municipal level. Batangas then forwards the consolidated provincial canvass to the National COMELEC Canvassing center at the PICC which is supposed to reflect my total Nasugbu results of 11, 894 votes. But up to May 12, at about 3:00pm it was reflecting only 47 votes out of 11, 894. It remained that way for almost 2 days from the date and time of the completion of the Nasugbu Municipal Canvass. The shaved figures however were magically rectified after the fraud has been discovered by the AKP staffs and after JC de los Reyes already withdrew his act of conceding defeat--with the Nasugbu shaving as one of his reasons.

Questions & Probable Answers

1. Why were there two varying sets of figures representing the canvassed Nasugbu AKP votes when these numbers were supposed to have been sent by one and the same counting machine (PCOS)? There must be two or more PCOS handling the same votes but performing different functions such as diverting, adding, shaving, etc. Or the Nasugbu Municipal votes were simply shaved while being transmitted to the Batangas Provincial canvasser.

2. How was the shaved figures rectified after the discovery of the shaving and the publicized retraction by JC de los Reyes to make them conform to the correct number of votes appearing at the Nasugbu COC (Certificate of Canvass)? This rectification/regrowing shows that with the flick of a switch or a sleight of hand of those manning the PCOS the canvassed votes can be subjected to subtraction, addition, multiplication; may be made to disappear into the cyberspace, even dance Cha-cha and/or follow any other action at the whim of the operator.

3. During the almost two days when the AKP votes were missing in the COMELEC canvass, where were they being kept or stored? Are they waiting for the highest bidder or have been diverted already in favor of other candidates? When the correct figures of AKP votes were restored were these numbers taken back from the candidates in whose favor they were credited or did the PCOS manufacture the missing number of votes? This must be one explanation for the avalanche of excessive number of votes in favor of the winning candidates right after the closing of the poles.

Coming out with this expose can pit me against heartless machines operated by men and women with devious schemes. But I trust in the Filipinos’ basic sense of righteousness. With this faith in you I believe that you will help me get to the bottom of what may be called Precinct Count Optical Scam ( PCOS 2010). Or at the very least, you have given me a chance to present to you my case. And for this I thank you.

May God bless us all and light our road.

Sincerely yours,
Grace Riñoza-Plazo
AKP Senatorial Candidate

(Reprinted with permission from Ms. Grace Rinoza-Plazo)

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Source:

Riñoza-Plazo, Grace. HOCUS PCOS 2010 Philippines. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=129393793743482

Photo credit: 

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1773234620053#!/photo.php?fbid=389173414089&set=t.100000610537641

Reposts are licensed to the respective authors. Otherwise, posts by Jesusa Bernardo are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines.

Posting the May 10, 2010 ballot images in the Internet will restore the democratic principle of counting in public

by Roberto Verzola

Halalang Marangal (HALAL) welcomes the positive responses to its proposal that the ballot images now on memory cards [in connection with the May 10, 2010 Philippine automated electoral system or AES elections] be unencrypted and made public. With this statement, we want to respond to the objection that our proposal violates ballot secrecy.

 The two basic electoral principles in a democracy are voting in secret and counting in public.

Voting in secret. This means keeping a voter’s choices secret from others, shielding the voter from pressure or harassment and making vote-buying dificult. Putting the ballot images online does not violate this secrecy, because a ballot and its image do not contain the name of the voter who cast it. In the manual system, ballots are also opened and counted in public without violating ballot secrecy.

Voting in secret does not mean keeping a voter’s choices secret from himself. In fact, this is what the Comelec did when it ordered the voter verification feature of the PCOS machines disabled, keeping the electronic ballot secret from the voter himself.

Counting in public. Votes represent the collective voice of the people. Counting votes in public is therefore a basic feature of a democracy. The PCOS machine denied voters and candidates the right to see the votes being counted and tallied. In effect, our votes were counted in secret, not in public. This secret counting of votes is a big step backward, compared to the old system where voters and candidates were able to see with their own eyes if their votes were being registered, counted and tallied correctly.

Because it was going to be a public count of votes in only 1,145 out of 76,347 precincts, the random manual audit was a poor substitute to public counting. The audit had other flaws as well:

1. the precincts to be audited were announced too soon, forewarning cheats;
2. some were done several days after May 10, instead of immediately after the ERs were transmitted;
3. some were done after the ballot boxes were transported and stored elsewhere, while they should have been conducted in the precinct itself;
4.  some were not conducted without political party watchers and election watchdogs, who were essential to the integrity of the process;
5. the results were not announced immediately after the conduct of the audit but went through further “processing”, raising concerns that the results were sanitized;
6. until now, more than a month after the elections, the full audit report has not been released yet; and
7. the Comelec and PPCRV have prematurely declared, based on the incomplete results, that the discrepancies found were “minimal”, without releasing the actual machine and audit counts themselves, giving the public no opportunity to compare the two ourselves.

The HALAL proposal to put ballot images online makes up for the secrecy surrounding both the automated counting of ballots and the subsequent audits of these machine counts. It restores the public counting of votes in the electoral process. We suggest that its coverage be extended in three stages: first, the 1,145 precincts covered by the audit; second, all precincts covered by local electoral protests; and third, all the 76,347 precincts in the country. Let the ballot image files on the CF cards of these precincts be unencrypted and released to the public through the Web and on DVDs, so that the public may go through every ballot image in any particular precinct and compare its count with the count posted on the Comelec website or the audit count arrived at by the audit team.

Allowing the public to actually count the votes in the ballots, as we have always done in the past, should settle once and for all public concerns about the accuracy and integrity of the automated elections.

We ask all to add their voices to this proposal, so we may count our votes in public once again.

Reference: Roberto Verzola, Secretary-general (0929-856-1930)

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Halalang Marangal Press Statement, June 19, 2010

Source URL: 

http://pcoswatch.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/putting-ballot-images-online-restores-the-democratic-principle-of-counting-in-public/


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