MANILA, Philippines—Let’s see if old-fashioned dagdag-bawas (vote-padding and shaving) schemes can catch up with technology.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is challenging computer hackers to take a crack at the software that will be used in the 2010 elections to prove that the system is secure from fraud and tampering.

“By the time a hacker gets into our system, the election is over,” Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino boldly declared Monday in a press briefing.

Tolentino said the Comelec would welcome cyber-security experts who wish to check the system for weaknesses.

Programmers and the general public can also scrutinize the source code of the company that will bag the P11.3-billion automation contract for the 2010 national elections.

The source code refers to the set of programs that carries the system’s instructions.

“The winning bidder’s software, the source code, will be open to inspection by the public,” Tolentino told reporters.

“They can look at it line by line to ensure that there is no malicious program inside,” he said.

The Comelec will also open the system and the machines to “ethical hackers” or IT experts who would be allowed by the agency to test the system.

“Then there are those who might try to hack the system without telling us. That’s OK. We are open to that,” he said.

Tolentino was parrying criticisms from politicians, poll watchdogs, and some IT experts who fear that the Comelec’s adoption of the Precinct Counting Optical Scan (PCOS) system would only give rise to a new, more sophisticated mode of election cheating.

Doubters

PCOS refers to the general scheme that the Comelec had chosen for the casting, counting and canvassing of votes for the 2010 elections. Up for bidding next month is the contract for the specific software and voting and counting machines on which the PCOS will be run.

Doubting the Comelec’s readiness to fully automate by May 2010, former Comelec Chair Christian Monsod earlier warned that “software specialists” would now take on the dirty job previously carried out manually by unscrupulous poll personnel and political operatives.

Among the infamous methods of large-scale fraud widely alleged to have marred past manual elections was the so-called dagdag-bawas scheme, or the manipulation of election results through vote padding and shaving.

IT expert and transparentelections.org head Gus Lugman had also noted that the Comelec would be relying on software “not written in the Philippines.”

But Tolentino Monday said anyone who planned to attack the system would not only need technical expertise but also huge funding to set up powerful computers that could crack the 128-bit encryption code.

Stored at BSP

For added security, the source code of the chosen system will be stored “in escrow” at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), he added.

Also Monday, Comelec Chair Jose Melo presented the poll body’s terms of reference (TOR) or the technical and financial requirements for the contract bidders.

The TOR mainly requires interested suppliers to provide a paper-based automation election system, a system for the electronic transmission of the results, and a management plan governing the entire process.

The Comelec will release the TOR documents, priced at $20,000 per set, on March 18.

10 bidders

“The last day of purchasing (the documents) is on March 25. On March 27, there would be a pre-bidding conference where bidders can seek to clarify matters,” Melo said.

The Comelec will open the bids on April 27 and award the contract not later than May 21.

Melo earlier announced that 10 companies had expressed interest in joining the bidding for the P11.3-billion automation contract.

He then assured critics that since these companies have international operations and reputations to protect, they would not allow their products to be used for fraud in the coming Philippine elections.