The Supreme Court has dismissed the petitions for mandamus filed seeking to compel the Commission on Elections to allow groups to open and review the source code in the vote-counting machines provided for under Republic Act 9369 or the Election Modernization Act of 1997.
In an banc decision dated April 30 but was released to the media only on Monday, the SC also denied the motion of the petitioners—Senator Richard Gordon, the Bagumbayan-NVP Movement Inc. and Tanggulang Demokrasya—to hold former Comelec chairman Sixto Brilliantes Jr. in contempt for his failure to comply with his commitments to the Court during the May 8, 2013 oral arguments to, among others, make the source code available for review and to grant more time to the parties to comply with the requirements to do so.
“In deciding that Chairman Brillantes is not liable for indirect contempt, the Court focuses solely on the undertakings that were directly promised to the Court, not those which the petitioner feels were promised,” the tribunal said.
The SC the dismissed the petition on the ground of “being moot and academic” while their plea to cite Brilliantes for contempt was junked for “utter lack of merit.”
The high court also turned down the plea of the petitioners to compel the Comelec to use digital electronic election returns and provide for the basic security safeguards, which include the source code review, vote verification, and random audit in compliance with RA 9369.
The tribunal took judicial notice of Comelec Resolution No. 10423 promulgated on September 21, 2018, modifying the qualifications for the source code review for the 2019 elections as well as providing for several steps before an interested party may actually get around to review the source code.
“As this Resolution No. 10423 governs the conduct of the [2019] elections and any automated election from here on unless it, itself, is superseded by another, the cause of action of the petitioners has ceased to exist,” stated the SC decision penned by Associate Justice Andres Reyes Jr.
The SC also noted that the recent promulgation of Resolution No. 10458 (General Instructions for the conduct of Random Manual Audit relative to the May 13, 2019 Automated National and Local Elections and subsequent elections thereafter), on December 5, 2018, Resolution No. 10460, or the General Instructions on the constitution, composition and appointment of the Electoral Board; use of the Vote Counting Machines; the process of testing and sealing of the Vote Counting Machines; and the voting, counting and transmission of election results, on December 6, 2018, and Resolution No. 10487, or the VCM Operation procedures for (A) Final Testing and Sealing (FTS) (B) Election Day and (C) Transmission of Election Results in connection with the May 13, 2019 National and Local Elections, on January 23, 2019 (Resolution No. 10487, in particular, supplanted Resolution No. 10460) have made the petitions moot and academic.
“The promulgation of these removes the justiciable controversy existing in the consolidated petitions especially as it is these resolutions that now govern the conduct of the specific items being assailed,” the SC ruled.
Likewise, the SC held that the electronic transmission through the method promulgated by the Comelec is valid under the law, as it cited the Rules on Electronic Evidence.