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Plaza will try to hack poll automation system

03/20/2009

After hurling a challenge to anyone who can hack into its so-called fool-proof automated vote-counting system, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) now finds aitself in the middle of an exciting game of computer hacking and system manipulation.

This, after Agusan del Sur Rep. Rodolfo Rodrigo Plaza accepted the Comelec’s challenge as he declared that he can hack into its computer system and

manipulate the automated vote-counting machines.

“I accept the challenge of the Comelec,” said Plaza, a businessman-lawmaker who is now on his last term as congressman.

But before he agreed to hack the Comelec’s system, Plaza imposed on the poll body at least six conditions, among them:

“We (Plaza’s camp) will be allowed to choose our own weapons; there will be no time limit; the whole process will be televised; the primary objective is to paralyze the system; the secondary objective is to manipulate the data; and the tertiary objective is to crack the software code,” he said.

What prompted Plaza to take the Comelec challenge was a boast by Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino that the automated vote-counting system running on a technology called precinct count optical scan could not be hacked.

Tolentino’s boast was obviously meant to allay the widespread fear that the automated vote counting machines, budget with a staggering P11.3 billion, could also be manipulated which, if that would really happen, would again thwart the will of the electorate.

But to prove both the integrity and the effectiveness of the Comelec’s poll automation system, Tolentino stressed that the poll body would hold a mock election among political parties and other interested groups three days before the holding of the national elections scheduled on May 10, 2010.

That will be about 14 months from now, within which Plaza and his camp can work overtime to prove that the poll automation system is indeed “hackable.”

But even without Plaza challenging the integrity of Comelec’s poll automation system, hackers, both amateur and professional, will certainly pose a serious bid to pollute it and thus put a cloud of doubt on a system the public has fervently hoped can bring a clean and fair election for the first time in many decades.

Gerry Baldo