The document provides details about the first automated national elections that took place in the Philippines in May 2010. It describes the scope of the automation project undertaken by Smartmatic, including deploying over 82,000 voting machines across the country. It discusses the praise the elections received from international observers and officials for increasing transparency and credibility. While some issues like long lines and a few machine malfunctions occurred, the automation was widely seen as a success and a major step forward for Philippine democracy.

1. Dossier:
General Election 2010
The Philippines

3. In May 2010 the Republic of the Philippines carried out the first automated elections
in Southeast Asia: 82,200 voting machines for 50 million voters, were distributed
among the 7,107 islands comprising the archipelago. Smartmatic won the bid for this
automation project, the largest that any private company has ever undertaken.
After a complex bidding process with the participation of seven suppliers of
automated voting systems, Smartmatic’s proposal, besides being the most economic
offer, was regarded by the COMELEC’s (Philippine Commission on Elections) Special
Bids and Awards Committee Chairman to be the only one that fulfilled every
requirement, including the automation of a 100% of voting centers, the capacity to
conduct audits from start to finish, full monitoring during the event, and the ability
to obtain results in a very short time. Additionally, per COMELEC’s requirements,
Smartmatic’s voting machines were tested many times and always arrived at exact
results.

4. Scope General Elections
82,200 voting machines were deployed. Each was provided with a battery to
guarantee continuous operation for 16 hours in case of blackouts.
1,722 canvassing and consolidation servers and printers with their power
generators.
338,750 Paper Rolls for printing of 30 copies of election returns per precinct.
180,640 Compact Flash Memory Cards for secure election data storage.
23,000 m2 Central Warehousing and Configuration Facility completely
operational and secure.
Over 36,000 schools functioned as voting centers, which were surveyed with
state-of-the-art equipment to determine network signals, power availability and
other logistical concerns.
Over 48,000 Smartmatic technicians were recruited and trained for on-site
support before and during Election Day.
690 Call Center Agents were located in the National Support Center during
Election Day.
28 multinational experts at the Project Management team, working along 327
highly qualified Filipino employees.
1,500 metric tons of ballot paper.
9,380 liters of ink to be used during the voting process.
Over 50 million ballots with security marks with invisible ultraviolet mark and
unique barcode.
5,500 mobile satellite antennas and 680 VSAT were deployed nationwide for the
transmission of results in the polling and canvassing centers.
48,000 Modems and 46,000 SIM cards were secured for direct transmission of
election returns.
2 Data Centers were created to backup nationwide results.

5. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo voting on Election Day
Jose Melo, Commission on Elections Chairman

6. Igorot tribesman Nicolas Cawed and his daughter Mia Nicole, voting in Baguio city.
More than 900 testing and configuration worked readying the machines for the Election
Most voters selected Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III as President

7. Smartmatic trained COMELEC’s personnel
World Boxing Organization champion Manny Pacquiao celebrates his victory to the Congress,
representing the Province of Sarangani

8. What others said about the Election
The following are selected quotes taken from news reports noting officials supporting the
use of e-voting in the election:
US President Barack Obama hailed the May 10 Philippine elections as "a model of
transparency and positive testament to the strength and vitality of democracy in
the Philippines" | According to a press statement issued by the White House
Office of the Press Secretary - 06/10/2010
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/06/10/10/obama-congratulates-president-elect-aquino
“The new electronic voting was a great leap forward for ensuring a smooth and
protected vote. It was a fulfillment of the automation that we pushed for from
the start... To all who made automation a reality and a success, congratulations!!
| Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines - 05/11/2010
http://politics.inquirer.net/politics/view/20100511-269405/Arroyo-assures-smooth-transition
"I had the privilege of observing the electoral process (…) and was impressed by
the manner in which this first nation-wide automated election was conducted.
Voters seemed generally comfortable with this new system, turn-out was high,
and the automation process seemed to work well, with relatively few technical
hitches” | Alistair MacDonald, EU Ambassador to the Philippines - 05/11/2010
http://www.delphl.ec.europa.eu/docs/Congratulatory%20Message%20Elections.pdf
“… That’s the beauty of automation. There’s no room for cheating” | Tita de Villa,
Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) - 05/11/2010
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=574307&publicationSubCategoryId=63

9. “The success of the elections would be a feather in the cap of the Comelec,
Smartmatic-TIM, the police and military” | Gary Olivar, Deputy presidential
spokesperson - 05/11/2010
http://quotes.stocknod.com/stocknod/?ChannelID=3191&GUID=13039898&Page=MediaViewer
“I’m smiling again. The automation is a success” | Jose Melo, Chairman of
Comelec. 05/11/2010
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/mb/20100511/tph-comelec-proves-critics-wrong-020e1c8.html
“This only shows that we can pull this through. The conduct of the poll
automation proves our critics wrong” | Gregorio Larrazabal, Comelec
Commissioner - 05/11/2010
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/mb/20100511/tph-comelec-proves-critics-wrong-020e1c8.html
"The Embassy of the United States extends warm congratulations to the people of
the Philippines for achieving another milestone in their nation's democratic
history with the May 10 elections” | Embassy of the United States in the
Philippines - 05/11/2010
http://manila.usembassy.gov/p2010_0008.pdf

12. Media Highlights:
Since the day of the Election more than 10,000
articles have been published in both local and
international news outlets

13. Election heroes
Chin Wong / Digital Life
06/08/2010
ONE of the supreme ironies of the last election was how vigorously some IT professionals opposed
the government’s efforts to automate the process.
One of these was Gus Lagman, a former IBM executive and one of the founders of STI College,
who urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct a parallel, manual count.
Another was Manuel Alcuaz Jr., a member of the Management Association of the Philippines, and
who, like Lagman, was an IT consultant for the National Movement for Free Elections.
Both were pioneers in the Philippine computer industry.
In the hothouse atmosphere of distrust, it was easy to understand concerns about security,
hacking and possible election fraud. On the other hand, a parallel, manual count would have
defeated the very purpose of automation and kept Filipinos waiting much longer for the results.
To put things in perspective, the Philippines has had laws mandating the automation of elections
since 1997. Still, until the May 2010 elections, we have stubbornly stuck to a manual system that is
prone to all forms of cheating. These include the stuffing of ballot boxes with fake ballots; the
misreading of ballots during the counting; the snatching, destruction or substitution of ballot
boxes; vote padding or shaving, and the falsification of election returns. Because the counting
process was long and tedious, there were opportunities for electoral fraud at every stage. The long
wait for results also created suspicion in the minds of the public that the outcome was being
cooked.
Automation was aimed at solving these problems and giving the public fast and credible election
results. What it was not designed to solve were many other election-related ills, such as vote
buying, the intimidation of voters, or the widespread use of black propaganda during the
campaign period. Still, that didn’t stop some election observers from the US and Canada from
declaring the automated election a “miscarriage of democracy”—as if these deep-rooted
problems could have been waved away by the use of automated counting machines. These same
observers pointed to the long lines at the polling stations and the malfunctioning of some vote-

14. counting machines as evidence that voters were disenfranchised. What they didn’t say was that
the 300 or so machines that failed and that were replaced represented less than 1 percent of the
more than 76,000 that were used nationwide. This hardly constitutes the picture of massive
disenfranchisement that the international observers sought to paint. Nor did it jibe with the
congratulatory messages that the US government and the European Union sent regarding the
overall success of the elections.
There was one other election-related ill that automation could not eradicate: sore losers. It’s been
said there are only two types of candidates in this country: those who win and those who were
cheated. With the notable exception of some candidates who conceded gracefully, many losers
claimed that the system was hacked and that they were somehow cheated out of victory. These
claims came to a boil when one losing candidate leaked a video of a masked man who looked like
a koala bear, claiming that he had rigged the election for some candidates in exchange for millions
of pesos. He offered no proof, then crawled back into the woodwork as quickly as he had surfaced.
In the aftermath of all the allegations of fraud, Congress has begun its own investigations. So far,
while the probe has uncovered instances of human error, there has been no evidence that there
was widespread fraud, or that the system was ever seriously compromised.
One of the security consultants that Congress deputized as a resource person, Drexx Laggui of
Laggui and Associates, concluded that the consolidation and canvassing system that ran on
Ubuntu Linux could not be easily bypassed, and that the vote-counting machines, which also used
Linux, could not be harmed by Windows viruses.
“We were happy to conclude that the Ubuntu machine was a well-configured bastion host,” Laggui
said, noting that it had been set up by members of the Philippine Linux Users Group who were
hired by the government’s IT provider, Smartmatic.
“We now know lots of details as to how cheating cannot be done, which answers all of the publicly
known issues, including those of Mr. Koala Boy,” Laggui added.
While the audit of the Smartmatic system continues, the initial findings are encouraging. Despite
the glitches and the expected complaints from losing candidates, the automated system worked
fairly well.
Whether your candidate won or not, it was a refreshing change to know who did, one or two days
later.
Of course, this is not how Lagman saw it. As complaints and accusations from losers poured in, he

15. declared that we were no better off today than we were when we had a manual system—even
though none of the complainants produced any solid evidence of fraud.
Alcuaz had a more tempered reaction a few days after Election Day, when the fast computerized
count made it clear that opposition Senator Benigno Aquino III had won the presidency.
“We are happy to be wrong,” Alcuaz said. Then, as a parting shot that seemed to take credit for a
system they said would never work, he added: “There is no substitute for vigilance.”
There were many heroes in the automated elections. The voters who waited in line for hours to
cast their votes; the public school teachers who fulfilled their poll duties; and the Comelec officials
who refused to back down and return to a manual system. In my book, the naysayers just didn’t
make the grade.
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideBusop.htm?f=2010/june/8/chinwong.isx&d=2010/june/8

16. Automation gets thumbs up
Business Mirror
06/23/10
THE first computerized national elections in the Philippines have made a good impression among
voters surveyed this month in the National Capital Region, with 97 percent saying they are
satisfied with the overall performance of the poll automation, while 3 percent said they are not
satisfied with it.
Prof. Alfredo S. Sureta Jr., executive director of StratPOLLS, said on Wednesday the survey was
undertaken in eight key areas of the region-Caloocan, Quezon City, Valenzuela, Pasig, Pasay,
Manila, Makati and Las Piñas-using a sample base of 500 respondents in a metropolis which earlier
gave President-elect Benigno Aquino III a rating of 46.2 percent of the votes in the premier region.
Satisfaction ratings of 100 percent each were registered in Valenzuela, Manila, Makati and Las
Piñas. Voters in Caloocan registered 97-percent satisfied, and Pasig 96 percent. Quezon City and
Pasay scored the lowest satisfaction rating with 92 percent each.
Sureta said the high satisfaction for the overall performance of the May 10 automation was
registered, notwithstanding the fact that voters waited in long lines for their turn to vote,
including Mr. Aquino himself, who waited four hours in his own precinct in Tarlac City together
with members of his family.
One of the country's four polling firms that tracked presidential surveys with fair accuracy
It will be recalled that StratPOLLS, sister company of the BusinessMirror, Philippines Graphic, dwIZ
and Home Radio, was one of the country's four polling firms which tracked and predicted with fair
accuracy the outcome of the national elections showing Aquino leading in all of its five national
survey projects starting in September of 2009 until the pre-election survey of May 2, 2010.
"Had it not been for Aquino's landslide victory, the automation of the recent elections could have
been placed under a cloud of doubt, let alone the results," said Sureta.
He also said the voting public accepted the results of the poll automation without widespread
public outcry or street protests, notwithstanding a wide disparity in the results of the top two

17. positions where Aquino won by a landslide margin while his running mate Sen. Mar Roxas II lost by
a narrow margin over rival candidate Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay.
Voting public has matured but...
"It appears that the voting public has matured almost overnight insofar as shifting from the
tedious manual counting to automation is concerned," said Sureta.
Asked if he believed the results of the poll reflected the true will of the people, Sureta said, "It
appeared that cheating was absent, or at least was very minimal, in the May 10 polls,
notwithstanding the last-minute problem encountered with the flash cards days before election
day.
"Although we could expect a lot of headaches in the elections of 2013 simply because those who
really intend to cheat would have made digital adjustments by then," he concluded.
The StratPOLLS survey on poll automation was conducted by telephone from June 6 to 9, 2010,
with a margin of error of 3 percent more or less.
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26876:automation-
gets-thumbs-up&catid=23:topnews&Itemid=58

18. Automated voting jolts Philippine politics into digital age
Roberto Coloma, Agence France-Presse
05/14/2010
MANILA - Philippine politics will never be the same after the country's first automated ballot
electrified voters long used to cheating, violence and disputes over delayed results.
Senator Benigno Aquino III, 50, whose parents led the struggle to restore Philippine democracy,
will soon become the country's first digitally elected president after a rapid vote count showed
him winning by a landslide.
Despite daunting logistic challenges in a sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago with 50 million
voters, ballot-counting machines were activated just in time for Monday's elections for 17,000
positions.
The saying that "guns, goons and gold" lord it over Philippine elections may no longer be totally
true after a new weapon, the microchip, entered the scene.
"That was so pleasant: waking up to the results the morning after general elections," political
scientist Alex Magno wrote in the daily The Philippine Star.
"If there was any group wanting to disrupt the voting and the count, they were stumped by the
speed of the process."
In the past, paid thugs as well as rouge soldiers and policemen working for politicians snatched
ballot boxes, intimidated voters and doctored tallies.
This time, Filipinos were thrilled by the chance to slip their own ballots into digital scanners and
know the results were being stored electronically for delivery to a central computer server in
Manila, safe from theft and tampering.
"It was really an overwhelming experience for me because I knew that at that moment, I was
making history for the country," said Franz Jonathan de la Fuente, 19, a first-time voter studying
journalism at the University of the Philippines.
"I understand that other kids my age during past elections voted manually. Somehow I felt assured
that through automation, there was a better chance of my vote being counted," he told AFP.
The United States and other countries welcomed the overhaul of the flawed election system in
one of the world's most boisterous democracies.

19. European Union Ambassador to Manila Alistair MacDonald said after observing the election that
"voters seemed generally comfortable with this new system" and the process seemed to work
well.
Not everybody was happy -- former president Joseph Estrada, trailing Aquino by five million votes,
has indicated he will raise technical questions when the Philippine Congress certifies the electronic
results in a few weeks.
Violence remained a problem, highlighted by last November's massacre of 57 civilians by gunmen
loyal to a powerful Muslim politician in the southern island of Mindanao. The clan's leaders are
now in detention.
Dozens of other people were killed in election-related violence, including 10 on polling day, mostly
in the restive south where Muslim militants and communist guerrillas are a perennial threat.
Legacy problems such as inaccurate voter lists also cropped up during the vote and election
officials admit further improvements are needed.
But the country appears to have bought the idea that computers can safeguard democracy.
In the old system, ballots were dropped by hand into locked metal boxes and counted by hand
after sundown, when mischief was easier to commit in outlying provinces under cover of darkness.
Small disputes and transport delays in thousands of polling centers could prolong the process all
the way down to the national tally.
Modern-day Philippine democracy can be said to owe its existence to dirty elections.
In 1986, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was challenged in a snap election by Corazon "Cory"
Aquino. She was the widow of Marcos's bitter foe, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, who had been
assassinated three years earlier by government troops.
Amid massive cheating and protests, Marcos was proclaimed the winner of the 1986 elections but
Aquino led a "People Power" revolution that sent the dictator into US exile and the widow into the
presidency.
Twenty four years later, her son, Beningo "Noynoy" Aquino, is awaiting proclamation as president
after the most dramatic reform of the Philippine election system.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ilRYitMYjeP3mizWE4VbyShEGcrQ

20. Votes tallied & presidential winner known in record time in Philippines election
SMARTMATIC ELECTORAL SOLUTION DELIVERS FIRST EVER NATIONAL AUTOMATED
ELECTION IN THE PHILIPPINES
Largest Election Ever by Private Company: Nearly 80,000 Voting Machines Deployed
Smartmatic voting solution delivers 100% accuracy, reliability and auditability
Manila, Philippines, May 12, 2010 – In the wake of the first automated national election in the
Philippines, Smartmatic today announced that its voting solution performed with complete
reliability and accuracy. During the election, the machines transmitted accurately, rapidly and
reliably, and after the polls closed, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) certified the results,
which were accepted by the representatives of the different political parties.
“Today’s election was an important step forward for the Philippines,” said Jose Melo, Chairman at
COMELEC. “By automating our voting process we are able to deliver a faster, more transparent
and accurate election and final vote tally. The fact that all parties accepted the results, which have
been delivered in record time, is a testament to the success of our automated election.”
In the closely monitored election, most voters selected Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III as president.
The votes were tallied in record time, marking the first-time a victor was known within 12 hours.
Additional Key electoral statistics include:
• Transmitted Votes: 92% in 24 hours
• Machine replacement .59% or 486 PCOS out of 76,347
• First election result report Delivered in 1 hour after closing
• Overall Voter turn out 80%
• Electronic Voting machines used: 76,347
• Time to Cast Vote: Less than 6 minutes
• Voting Machine Support Technicians: 48,000
• Geography: 7,107 islands comprising the archipelago
SMARTMATIC SOLUTION: SIMPLIER, FASTER + MORE RELIABLE
The voters in the Philippines used Smartmatic’s voting solution, which was able to significantly
reduce the time needed to cast and transmit votes. Upon the closing of the polls, the machines

21. counted the votes within seconds and transmitted the results to the Canvassing Servers. Less than
24 hours later, more than 90% of all the results had been transmitted and tallied.
This marks a drastic improvement from all Philippine elections to date where it often took months
before the final election results were delivered. In the past, the long delays in election results
frequently led to social unrest, disputed results and fraud allegations.
“The speed, transparency and universal acceptance of the election results is evidence that our
electoral solution aides the democratic process,” said Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic.

22. Fast count stuns nation
05/12/2010
MANILA, Philippines—Shell-shocked. Winners and losers did not know what hit them as a barrage
of election tallies—first a trickle, then a torrent—confronted them with the reality that the
poisoned political environment had nothing to do with Monday’s automated elections, officials
said Tuesday.
“It was faster than you can say Garci,” said Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Jose Melo,
alluding to disgraced former commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who was accused of colluding with
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to rig the 2004 presidential election, a charge she denies.
The first results came from satellite transmissions—the VSATs and BGANs—from mountainous
regions in northern Luzon where there were no regular cell phone sites and the voting populations
were small.
At 3 p.m. on Monday, as attention was riveted on TV coverage of the chaos and confusion in the
heavily populated voting centers, the Comelec decided to convene as the National Board of
Canvassers.
The first results were coming in from Mountain Province at that time.
From then on, the transmission turned swift and steady, said Henrietta de Villa, chair of the
Church-led Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), the Comelec’s citizen’s arm.
“It was better than expected,” she said.
At around 7 p.m., officials of Smartmatic-TIM, the Comelec’s automation partner, announced that
10,000 precincts had already transmitted results and had printed 30 election returns. By midnight,
57 percent of the precincts had reported results.
Cesar Flores, the company spokesperson, said that 92 to 95 percent of the results should be in by
Tuesday midnight.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said that defeated candidates were “a little shell-shocked”
when they realized that they had lost the race in just a few hours.

23. “The candidates, all of them, were taken by surprise,” Jimenez said.
“In the past, they still had time to manipulate the outcome,” said Ramon Casiple of the Comelec
advisory council.
“That is not the case now,” Casiple said, comparing the electronic vote with the previous manual
exercise.
Doomsday scenarios
Before Monday’s elections, talk was rife that the President was on overdrive scheming to remain
in power beyond her term ending next month, that glitches would reach such a scale that there
would be a failure of elections, that an operation plan was in the works for a takeover by a military
junta.
The political speculation made preparations for the balloting difficult, Flores conceded.
“Some people said we were going to cheat for somebody,” Flores said. But no politician even
attempted to approach the company to rig the vote, he said.
“There was a lot of noise and a lot of wrong accusation. The job speaks for itself. All our
projections came true. We never lied to the people. We never overpromised anything,” he added.
Flores said that in spite of the last minute glitches—the recall and replacement of the memory
cards for the 76,300 counting machines at the eleventh hour last week—the event turned into a
“great project.”
“I would say our work in this election would give us credibility,” said Melo at noon Tuesday with
around 75 percent, or about 30 million, of ballots cast counted.
Lessons learned
Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said that the quick delivery of results was “a big step forward
towards the restoration of the credibility.”
“By this election, we are learning. There are glitches we have to remedy in future elections. In
other words, we know now where we were short,” said Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer.
Sarmiento said the complaints about long queues, problems with counting machines and alleged
disenfranchisement would all be considered “raw data to improve and enhance our electoral
process so that we can provide a robust democracy for the Philippines.”
Turning to recent history, Melo recalled many instances when local Comelec officials were racing
to proclaim candidates, even without a sufficient partial count to make this conclusion.

24. “But here, under this system actually, there can be no proclamation unless there is a 100 percent
count,” Melo said.
“The process in 2007 was quite tortuous and cumbersome,” Sarmiento said. “All ballot boxes have
to be opened, to be examined carefully piece by piece. It was a very long process and objections
were made by lawyers left and right.”
Birth pains
Under automated elections, Sarmiento said the Comelec would now proclaim winners based on
electronically transmitted data in a process faster than the old manual system.
Ferrer said he still expected protests. “This is a free country.”
The automation technology worked, said PPCRV’s Clifford Sorita. “Some glitches had to be
adjusted, but these are birth pains,” he said. “We are learning.”
At the morning session of the canvassing for senatorial and party-list candidates, Melo abruptly
called off the proceedings amid grandstanding by some lawyers.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal had suddenly approached the microphone and demanded the
examination of the sealed envelopes opened with electronic user’s names and passwords.
“These proceedings are taking longer than the automation,” he said, banging the gavel and
suspending the canvassing until the afternoon.
http://politics.inquirer.net/politics/view/20100512-269508/Fast-count-stuns-nation

25. US, EU hail democratic milestone of Philippine polls
abs-cbnNEWS.com
05/11/2010
MANILA, Philippines - The United States and the European Union on Tuesday hailed the
overall conduct of the Philippines' first automated election and said it looked forward to
working with the new leader of a key Asian ally.
The US Embassy in Manila said it sent 120 observers across the country "to witness
Philippine democracy in action."
"While there are always lessons to be learned, our overwhelming impression is that the
Philippines has much to be proud of today. Philippine citizens served their nation by
volunteering at the polls, exercising their right to vote, and taking every step necessary to
ensure all ballots were counted," the embassy said.
It added: "We look forward to a smooth transition and, after June 30, to working with the
new Philippine government to deepen the friendship and partnership between our two
nations."
For his part, EU Ambassador to the Philippines Alistair MacDonald said he personally
witnessed how smooth and generally trouble-free the election was on Monday.
"The elections of May 10, the high voter turnout and the admirable patience shown by the
voters were an impressive proof of the resolve of the Philippine people to have their voice
heard in both national and local politics," he said in a statement.
He added: "I had the privilege of observing the electoral process in both Cavite and
Batangas yesterday and was impressed by the manner in which this first nation-wide
automated election was conducted. Voters seemed generally comfortable with this new
system, turn-out was high, and the automation process seemed to work well, with
relatively few technical hitches."

26. The Ambassador noted that many of his colleagues from EU Embassies had also observed
the elections, at various locations in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, and all had
appreciated the smooth conduct of the voting process overall. "Despite the intense heat,
the long lines and the inevitable unfamiliarity of a new process," he said, "our
observations suggested that this process was carried out smoothly, and the results
transmitted rapidly, in the great majority of cases."
He expressed concern, however, about reports of electoral violence both on and before
voting day. He said these detracted from an otherwise ground-breaking event in
Philippine electoral history, and expressed the hope that the authorities would follow up
quickly and effectively to bring the perpetrators to justice.
With just five million votes to be tallied, officials said Benigno Aquino III, son of late
Filipino democracy icons Ninoy and Cory Aquino, has a 4.5 million-vote lead over deposed
former president Joseph Estrada. Other candidates have conceded.
Election day was marred by scattered violence that left 10 people dead, but the
government pulled off the automated vote with minimal disruption. With Agence France-
Presse
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/05/11/10/us-eu-hail-democratic-milestone-philippine-polls

27. Comelec proves critics wrong
Manila Bulletin
05/11/2010
They were criticized, they were under extreme pressure, and they were almost ostracized.
But in the end, the Commission on Elections (Comelec), its officials and staff had the last
laugh.
Doomsayers and critics were silent – at least for now – as their worst predictions that
there would be massive cheating and failure of elections in the May 10 polls did not come
to pass.
“I’m smiling again. The automation is a success,” a visibly relieved and more relaxed
Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said a few hours after the voting period closed and results
started pouring in.
“This only shows that we can pull this through. The conduct of the poll automation proves
our critics wrong,” Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said Monday night as he
assessed the conduct of the polls. Larrazabal heads the poll body’s steering committee for
the Automated Election System (AES).
While there were reports of frustrated voters not finding their names due to the clustering
of the precincts, and irate people opting not to vote anymore because of the long queues
in polling precincts, such complaints far outweigh the benefit of automation.
For the first time since the country exercised its first democratic elections, winners – and
losers for that matter – are known and proclaimed in record time this time around.
Overcoming obstacles
The road to automation was not an easy task. Delays, concerns on the preparations and
logistics and questions of the system bugged the project. A week before the elections,
tension rose following the glitches in the configuration of the memory cards for the
Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

28. To critics, the AES was a disaster waiting to happen.
They were wrong.
Pulling what some may describe a miracle, Comelec and the winning consortium,
Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM), proved that clean, honest, and orderly
elections can be pulled off.
On election day, some 465 PCOS defective machines were reported by the poll body but
Larrazabal said it was relatively small compared to the 75,882 number of machines that
did not malfunction.
“It's not a bad number,” said Larrazabal on the 0.6 percent malfunction rate of the PCOS
machines.
Just a few hours after the last precinct has closed at 7 p.m., tabulated election results in
the national level – something unheard of and impossible to happen – were being
transmitted to the consolidated canvassing system of the Comelec.
At around 10 p.m., the Comelec has been reporting millions of counted votes in the
presidential, vice presidential and senatorial races, marking a new page in the country’s
electoral history.
For the time, Filipinos have a clear idea on who are leading in the race just before they call
it a night.
Winners and losers
Nacionalista Party (NP) bet Senator Manuel “Manny” Villar has accepted defeat Tuesday
morning, as more than half of the votes are transmitted to the poll body, easing tension
and providing relief.
Smartmatic-Asia President Cesar Flores attributed the huge voter turnout to the
introduction of the voting machines.
“It contributed to the higher turnout of voters. Many people were satisfied with the
system. It showed the democratic sentiment of the Filipino people,” said Flores.
Winning candidates in the senatorial race, which the Comelec will proclaim, are also being
announced.

29. Although results are being announced by the Comelec in the presidential and vice
presidential race, only Congress, convening as the National Board of Canvassers, can
officially proclaim the winners in the top two posts.
The biggest winner in the first automated elections are the Filipino people who reposed
their trust to a new system, after years of enduring the slow and torturous manual count.
The inconvenience they had to endure in Monday's elections – from searching their
names to the long lines, not to mention the punishing humidity and heat, was all worth it
to many voters.
For instance, at the precinct for Barangay Almanza Dos in Las Pinas City, Rolando Velarde,
a landscaper, said he was more than satisfied with the holding of the first automated
elections as it marks a new beginning to ensure a clean and honest elections.
“The automated elections has given us a new hope for a cleaner elections in the future as
long as we remain vigilant in safeguarding the sanctity of this exercise,” he said.
At least this time, the country is not the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Filipinos
have something new to be proud of.
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/256929/comelec-proves-critics-wrong

30. Smartmatic signs record $150 million voting contract for the elections in the Philippines
Manila, Philippines, July 10th, 2009. - The Commission On Elections (COMELEC) of the
Philippines signed today a contract for the automation of the 2010 National Elections with
Smartmatic, the winning company of this landmark bidding process. The contract to
provide voting machines, consolidation platforms and roll-out services, is the largest ever
in its class awarded to a private company in the electronic voting industry.
Smartmatic, a world-class leading supplier of electoral solutions and services, won the bid
to carry out the 2010 Election project in the Philippines. In what will be one of the largest
nationwide automated elections in the world, the contract worth approx. U.S. $150
million states that Smartmatic is to deploy 82,200 SAES1800 voting machines across a
sizable proportion of the 7,107 thousand islands comprising the territory of the
Philippines, and transmit all results electronically to over 1,700 canvassing and
consolidation centers. In addition, it will train and place 45,000 support technicians, and
manage all logistics and technical contingencies during the project, with the target of
enabling electronic voting to some 50 million voters, including even those living in remote
locations and difficult terrains.
The COMELEC held an arduous selection process with seven companies bidding over the
contract to automate the 2010 elections. After over four weeks of thorough analysis that
included stringent legal, technical and financial evaluations, Smartmatic was declared the
winner, as its proposal was the most technically qualified and at the same time the lowest
bid while simultaneously meeting all of COMELEC’s criteria, including ballot reading
accuracy, end-to-end audit capability, full event monitoring, and the capacity to arrive at
final results within timely limits.
Smartmatic based its offer on its state-of-the-art electronic voting technology, which is
completely compliant with the high standards set by the COMELEC to tackle the complex
elections of 2010. “The[Smartmatic] machines were tested four times and in all those
times, the accuracy rating was 100 percent” said Ferdinand Rafanan, COMELEC’s Special
Bids and Awards Committee Chairman.
“Due to the specific conditions of the Philippines, both in terms of geography and the
expectations of the Filipino people of having a modern electoral system, the 2010
automated elections will prove to be a landmark project; one we will take on with all of
our resources and commitment. The result will be a seamless and reliable election that will

31. become a world reference for others to follow. We are thankful to the COMELEC and the
people of the Philippines for the confidence they have deposited in our organization” said
Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO.
Smartmatic has successfully deployed its electronic voting technology in multiple electoral
processes in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, accurately counting
over 150 million votes, always with the provision of an auditable paper trail, and open
source-code reviews. Last year, the Smartmatic electoral technology was used in the
election in the ARMM region in the Philippines, an event the COMELEC regarded as very
satisfactory, and first of its kind in South East Asia.

32. US mission cites Comelec, Smartmatic
Manila Bulletin
07/11/2011
MANILA, Philippines — The hard work put up by the Commission on Elections (Comelec)
and its systems provider Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. to make the
May, 2010 automated polls a success has been cited by an American-led poll observation
mission.
The Carter Center, in its 70-page final report on last year’s Philippine elections, particularly
cited the balloting which was “marked by relatively high public confidence and trust in the
use of the optical mark recognition technology.”
“Such a success is a credit to the hard work of Comelec and Smartmatic as well as the
commitment of the people of the Philippines toward increasingly transparent elections,” it
said in its final report which was released recently.
The report also includes recommendations for further enhancing popular backing for
computerized voting, including the overhaul of the 1985 Omnibus Election Code to clear
the way for “a single, comprehensive electoral law that fully considers and integrates
provisions for automation” and responds to the country’s “changing electoral structure
and use of automated voting.”
“The creation of a comprehensive election law encompassing the amendments regarding
electoral technology would improve the transparency and efficiency of future election
processes,” said Carter Center, a veteran of 80 election observation missions in 30
countries since its inception nearly 30 years ago.
“As Comelec becomes more familiar with running an automated election, the body should
take specific and measured steps to build institutional capacity around the
implementation of the AES(automated election system),” the Carter Center proposed.

33. This, aside from training the Comelec commissioners and BEI officials in electronic voting
technology as this will help increase public confidence in their ability to administer
automated elections.
The Carter Report also recommended the following: providing “adequate time” in future
electoral calendars for the implementation of all stages of automation, increasing the
number of polling stations and dividing larger clustered precincts to minimize delays in the
voting process; and encouraging poll candidates and political parties to participate in pre-
election AES review and testing to further bolster public confidence in, and increase public
awareness and understanding of, the AES system.
Meanwhile, the international effort organized by the Carter Center was described in the
Carter Report as a “limited technical election observation mission” because instead of
covering all aspects of the elections, its baseline survey was focused only on automated
election technology and its impact on the Philippine electoral process.
It was the third such technical observation mission organized by the Carter Center,
following its earlier delegations that observed the national elections in Venezuela in 2006
and in the US in 2008.
The observers in the 2010 Philippine mission were Michael Hunter, Duncan Osborn,
Karthik Rangarajan of the Georgia Institute of Technology; Karen Ogle and Joyce Pitso of
the Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa (South Africa); and
Peter Wolf of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (Austria).
Alongside its six-member observation delegation, the Philippine mission had a technical
team and staff that conducted field work for three months during the preelection and
postelection periods from March to June last year.
Founded in 1982 by former US President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn in
partnership with Emory University, the primary goal of the Carter Center is to advance
peace and health worldwide.
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/326379/us-mission-cites-comelec-smartmatic

34. Comelec, Smartmatic lauded by poll watchdog
Manila Standard Today
07/11/2011
AN international election observation mission led by former US President Jimmy Carter
has cited the Commission on Elections and its private partner Smartmatic-Total
Information Management Corp. for the country’s first-ever automated voting last year
that was “marked by relatively high public confidence and trust on the use of the optical
mark recognition technology.”
Smartmatic-TIM leased to the government its Automated Election System and the 82,000
Precinct Count Optical Scanners for balloting task.
The mission led by Carter Center, a global peace and health advocacy nongovernment
organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, lauded the 2011 polls as “generally successful,
with Comelec and the technology vendor working in concert to provide necessary
assistance to poll workers through written instructions expert assistance, and a national
call center.”
The mission recommended the overhaul of the 1985 Omnibus Election Code to clear the
way for “a single, comprehensive electoral law that fully considers and integrates
provisions for automation” and responds to the “changing electoral structure and use of
automated voting.”
The Center’s findings on high public confidence and trust buttressed the results of
separate postelection opinion surveys by Social Weather Stations, Pulse Asia and
StratPOLLS, indicating support by the Filipino majority for the outcome of the automated
polls.
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideMetro.htm?f=2011/july/11/metro3.isx&d=2011/july/11

35. Voter education campaign carried out by Smartmatic

36. Smartmatic and COMELEC’s joint voter education campaign; Published in Philippines’s newspapers

37. Smartmatic and COMELEC’s joint voter education campaign; Published in Philippines’s newspapers

38. Smartmatic’s work in numbers; published in Philippines newspapers