Comelec assures public of integrity of OVCS amid tampering claims
MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) assured the public of the integrity of the online voting and counting system (OVCS) after an overseas voter in Singapore alleged changes in the vote he initially cast.
Comelec was pertaining to unverified posts penned by Jefferson Salazar Bonoan and others, claiming that different names of senatorial candidates, and not the ones they voted for, appeared in the result of their vote.
The posts also include screenshots of their official digital ballot with votes, among others.
READ: Comelec starts 1st overseas online vote
But Comelec justified that once a registered overseas voter casts their vote, the OVCS automatically encrypts it to safeguard it from interception, tampering, and unauthorized access.
READ: Garcia: Hackers fail to breach Comelec website, OVCS
The voter then “has the opportunity to review the ballot using the Ballot ID, via a ‘plaintext hash’—an industry-standard secure storage and verification. The hash contains the ballot style and image, along with the names of all senatorial and party-list candidates, which also contains the voter’s encrypted votes,” the commission further explained.
After voting, Comelec said that a voter will only see an encrypted script containing all the candidate names and not the bets he or she voted for.
“This is a method to ensure that no one can see and know the content of the votes, which cannot be photographed or used for vote-buying or vote-selling,” it added.
Additionally, the commission said the encrypted script will be used in three transparency and audit procedures:
- by printing each ballot at Philippine Posts (Embassies and Consulates) as necessary;
- by using the Election Verifier System, which will verify each ballot received in Election Returns, and will state whether the result is true and accurate or not;
- by Random Manual Audit as required by law, where posts will randomly select to manually count each vote on the ballots, which will be reprinted and linked to the printed and transmitted Election Returns
