Rody lawyer joins call vs electronic poll cheating

MANILA, Philippines – An election lawyer of president-elect Rodrigo Duterte has joined the bid in the Supreme Court (SC) for more measures to prevent electronic cheating in the country’s automated polls. 

Al Argosino, who represented Duterte in the earlier disqualification case before the Commission on Elections  (Comelec) prior to the May 9 polls, supported the petition filed by former Metro Rail Transit general manager Al Vitangcol III seeking to compel the poll body to adopt additional measures in the automated election system (AES).

He filed a similar petition citing the same material allegations and arguments, which the high court consolidated with Vitangcol’s petition. 

In session last Tuesday, the high court also required the Comelec to answer Argosino’s petition within 10 days from notice. 

The petitions specifically asked the SC to order the Comelec to conduct an inventory of identification numbers of the vote counting machines (VCMs). It also required the Comelec to make a list of all the internet protocol (IP) and media access control (MAC) addresses it will use in its virtual private network, together with their geographical locations.

An IP address is the numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network, while a MAC address is a globally unique identifier assigned to network devices often referred to as the hardware or the physical address of the device. Both are considered fingerprints of individuals in cyberspace. 

The petitioners argued that these measures are necessary so the poll body could trace electronic cheating in the AES. 

They cited reports in the 2010 polls about “rogue” machines that were allegedly used to manipulate the results of the elections. This refers to the 60 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) units recovered in the house of a Smartmatic-TIM technician in Antipolo City.

The petitioners believe there is a risk that a sniffer could capture the data transmission when the VCMs transmit the election returns to the Comelec’s central server, the transparency server and another server at the joint congressional canvassing.

The petitions come on the heels of the data leak of over 50 million voters from the Comelec database before the May 9 polls, which prompted fears from several sectors of possible cheating in the polls. – With Mayen Jaymalin