Comelec eyes review of local source code next month

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is eyeing to start the conduct of the local source code review in September as part of its preparation for the forthcoming 2019 midterm polls.

The poll body bared this despite continued opposition against the reuse of vote counting machines (VCMs), the same devices used during the 2016 national and local elections.

Several lawmakers, as well as poll watchdog groups, continue to call for the replacement of the Smartmatic machines and instead use a hybrid system for next year’s polls.

The source code is the human-readable instructions that dictate what the automated election system will do.

“The local source code review, we hope, can start in September. This will give us enough time to conduct a thorough local source code review,” said Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez.

But unlike in 2016, Jimenez said they would already skip the “baseline source code” review.

“Because the enhancements are already there in the system, it’s a total of about 80 enhancements which address usability and security, which are already there in the code, we jump straight to that customized code review,” Jimenez said.

Apart from the local source code review, there will also be an international code evaluation as soon as the required public bidding process for the service provider is finished, he added.

A separate source code review will also be conducted by an international certification entity to be chosen by the poll body.

Republic Act No. 9369 states that the commission shall “promptly make the source code available and open to any interested party or group, which may conduct their own review.”

Last year, the Comelec en banc decided to exercise the option-to-purchase clause in their lease contract with Smartmatic for the 97,517 VCMs for P2.1 billion for them to be reused in the May 2019 polls.