Election 2010 Computers: Good vs. Bad (Aug 18 09)

I prepared a set of Adobe Acrobat slides describing the PCOS or counting computers that will be used on election day May 10, 2010, and the CCS or canvassing computers that will be used at the city, municipal, provincial, national COMELEC, and national Congressional canvasses. The Financial Proposal submitted by Smartmatic-TIM to COMELEC was used as a basis for these slides.

I also give the good points and the bad points of each type of hardware and operating system. As I am one of the oldest Linux users in the Philippines, with Linux User No. 5037, and having taught courses on operating systems and Linux system administration for a number of years, and having actually done system administration for a time in Ateneo, I believe that my assessments as GOOD or BAD, are very reasonable.

I also mention nine (9) KNOWN ISSUES, a result of the critical study done by the "U.P. College of Law Policy Study Project on AES2010". You may debate the veracity of these KNOWN ISSUES, but you can always go back to the documents mentioned there and verify for yourselves the truth of these ISSUES.

We all want clean and honest elections in May 2010. But clean and honest elections will not happen automatically even if Smartmatic computers are used. My honest IT professional's belief is that unless these issues are addressed satisfactorily by Smartrmatic, COMELEC, the COMELEC Advisory Council, the COMELEC Technical Evaluation Committee, and the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee, then computerized election 2010 will lead to computerized failure of elections.