“There is a dark conspiracy to cast doubt, this early, on the results of the elections.”
Is it true that there’s been a breach of sensitive data from the servers of the Commission on Elections?
What has been presented so far as evidence is a screenshot from supposedly well-intentioned hackers who want to highlight the supposed vulnerabilities of the poll body’s servers.
The Comelec database of voter information that’s claimed to have been part of the breached data is not available online; PINs and passwords of vote counting machines (VCMs) that are also supposedly part of the breach had not yet been uploaded to the system at the time of the alleged hacking.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), after rigorous testing of the Comelec system, revealed that there is no evidence of hacking as the system cannot even generate data that were supposedly breached, reinforcing the Comelec’s claim that the information is not available online.
The poll body insists that their technology vendor’s role is limited to providing the automated election system (AES), and that the vendor has zero access to information that could affect the elections in any way. Expert analysis revealed that the data at the center of the controversy are not sensitive at all.
An IT expert representing the Partido Federal in the Local Source Code Review (LSCR), Alex Ramos, believes that the alleged compromised data is “completely irrelevant” to the elections.
Yet even after consideration of all these, a Senate investigation has been conducted, thus making the public believe that there’s indeed been a breach of the system.
It may have been overzealousness on the part of a well-meaning media outfit that prompted all the commotion. After all, allegations of hacking and breach of data in a hotly contested presidential election should be investigated and rectified as soon as possible.
But when all concerned parties have already rejected the claims of dubious parties, however well-intentioned they may be, then the case should be considered closed.
It is election season, however, and amid the din of various political ads, pundits’ analysis and battle for people’s perceptions, there seem to be certain quarters taking advantage of the issue to serve their own narrow interests.
What is coming to light in all the attempts to fan the flames of fear and misinformation about automated polls is a dark conspiracy to cast doubt, this early, on the results of the upcoming elections. Are these groups perhaps sensing imminent defeat and are looking for a convenient scapegoat?
Recall that former US President Donald Trump, sensing imminent defeat in his re-election bid against Joe Biden, began claiming electoral fraud without presenting any evidence. Trump campaigned heavily on the premise that he would be cheated out of his second term in the White House, and this sent his supporters all riled up enough for them to storm Congress after Biden won the election.
Is it possible therefore that certain groups in this country are taking a leaf from the Trump playbook and preparing to demonize the VCMs in case they lose? How else could we explain the alleged breach not going away despite the Comelec repeatedly saying that it does not share electoral data with their providers and all experts attesting the veracity of the poll body’s claims?
Even before the pandemic hit, there were serious proposals to return to manual elections. There was even talk of adopting a hybrid system, which would have been impractical and perhaps even a step backward in our election process.
Can we afford to go back to the evil triad of guns, goons and gold that held away in previous manual elections? Apparently not.
Yet the vilification of automated polls persists. Shooting down the automated election system has been the convenient tactic of those who have lost elections since the country adopted automated polls in 2010.
Losing candidates crying foul and protesting election results is nothing new, but blaming automated polls has proved convenient for those unable to win in electoral contests. Proving fraud in automated polls can be too technical and complicated, not to mention costly and time-consuming. It’s much easier to convince people that cheating could happen within the system rather than present them with precise reasons why fraud is impossible in an automated election.
Perhaps we are already seeing the start of certain sectors already sharpening their knives in case they lose. These parties may be starting to claim potential voter fraud this early by casting doubt on the reliability of automated polls.
For if the Comelec, the National Bureau of Investigation and a respected IT expert all insist and conclude that no electoral data have been compromised, why are some quarters still pushing this non-story?
Who are these groups who, while projecting themselves as uninvolved, are quietly laying the predicate for an electoral protest?
Let’s wait and see. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)