When convincing evidence is mounting almost a year after May 9, 2022, the scenario of election illegitimacy increases over time.

It is a first in the history of Philippine elections that postmortem was done through electronic audit and not through polarized surveys, assessments from losing political parties such as the camp of Leni Robredo et al, nor through public emotions. It is not a mere case of rumor vs. reality.

Evidence of systematic voter fraud from three independent analysts with qualified expertise confounds.

The Truth and Transparency trio of Augusto Lagman (IT expert, former Comelec commissioner), Eliseo Rio (Rodrigo Duterte’s first secretary of information and technology) and Franklin Ysaac (banking IT expert) early on had called attention to Comelec’s surreptitious printing of tens of millions of ballots without independent supervision and observers in violation of the Omnibus Election Code. Commissioner Marlon Casquejo of Davao City, in charge of the Comelec’s ballot printing committee, had disallowed it.

Then the TNTrio noted that Comelec had changed the source codes of the voting machines and the allied electronic equipment without any supervision and without informing the independent observers. Again, this was a violation of the rules. As if that grave anomaly was not enough, it had programmed and inserted the SIM cards that ran the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) without supervision and without foreknowledge of independent observers as to the programs and algorithms that went into the SIM cards.

These scenarios prompted the TNTrio to go to the Supreme Court last November. The SC then compelled the Comelec to release the transmission logs. Transmission logs are records of what the country’s 106,174 precincts’ VCMs had individually sent to the Transparency Server of the Comelec. The transmission and reception logs should match.

Comelec responded belatedly, even violating the SC-prescribed deadline, by releasing only the reception logs. Receptions logs are records of votes received by the Transparency Server from precinct VCMs nationwide. It is the transmission log that is crucial. The reception log can be doctored. Take note again: they should match.

By 8:02 pm of May 9 or an hour after the polls closed, 20 million+ votes had been received by Comelec, the TNTrio noted.

The election watchdog National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) also noted serious discrepancies. Take note: Namfrel was the world’s first and most famous election watchdog and non-partisan election monitor.

The Namfrel 2022 National-Local Election Final Report is easily accessible from the Namfrel website. The report is 89 pages, but here’s the bombshell on pages 23-24: during the Local Source Code Review (LSCR) demonstration Comelec conducted on March 22, 2022, the VCM System Hash Code shown during the demo did not match what Comelec had published.

The hash code is a kind of fingerprint of the software. If a change in the software is introduced, a different hash code will be generated. Namfrel wrote to Casquejo on March 23. Casquejo did not reply, but on March 24, a certification was posted on the Comelec website that the hash code mismatch was due to human error as these are manually typed. Imagine the possibilities there.

A very indispensable point Namfrel noted: the process of generating the system hash was never shown publicly to anyone. “Aside from the VCM System Hash, there were no other hash codes shared with the public to check. In layman’s terms, the software used on the VCMs on election day could have been different from the software reviewed by NAMFREL and other IT observers during the LSCR because the source code could have been edited in the meantime.” Namfrel wrote another letter to Comelec on March 25. Again, it received no response.

Now comes the Final Report of the Philippine Elections 2022 by the International Observers Mission. Who was the IOM? It was composed of 60 independent observers from 11 countries who were on the ground in the Philippines since April 1, 2022. They meticulously documented the campaign, the vote, and the aftermath of the elections in various areas including Central Luzon, National Capital Region, Southern Tagalog, Southern Luzon, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Eastern Visayas, and Mindanao. IOM observers included members of national parliaments, lawyers, trade unionists, church people, youth and students, educators, scientists, and human rights advocates. The work they put out was not easy. At various times, the IOM observers themselves were subjected to harassment and red-tagging by the police and military.

Released on June 28, 2022, the IOM report was the most comprehensive in its observations of media manipulation and repression, extrajudicial killings, election violence, fake news, vote buying, paid rallyists, political dynasties and patronage, the bastardization of the party-list system, etc. But it also noted the technological side of discrepancies.

First it noted malfunctioning VCMs. When these happened, it took longer for voters to cast their ballots. “In many cases, people were told to leave their ballots without receipts. In one polling station (an elementary school in NCR), Comelec promised to send a technician to fix the VCM, but nobody came.”

As for the unbelievably quick results, the IOM quoted a voter: “Slowest internet in Asia Pacific, the fastest result in election. How does that happen? Why?” The report found it suspicious that the results were apparently compiled that quickly. “It took a short time for the Marcos-Duterte camp to be proclaimed the winner.”

The most basic question the world asks of us is only this: did we meet the international standard of a free, honest, and fair election? Technology science says we have not sanctified the ballot. Ergo, to say we have a government that has no legitimacy does not take rocket science.

The call of the UP Vanguard fraternity’s Truth and Transparency signatories to impeach the Davao commissioners of the Commission on Elections is a step in the right direction. Because in the end, the crux of the matter is what to do with a government that was not legitimately elected. – Rappler.com

Antonio J. Montalván II is a social anthropologist who advocates that keeping quiet when things go wrong is the mentality of a slave, not a good citizen.