A FORMER Department of Information and Communications Technology executive has expressed alarm over the possible disenfranchisement of votes of Filipino overseas voters if the Commission on Elections fail to comply with the submission of the Technical Evaluation Committee report to the International Certification Authority.
“ I am just hoping that the Comelec has already complied with it and the International Certification to ICA which is mandated under the existing election laws,” said Jeffrey Ian Dy, erstwhile DICT undersecretary for Cyber Security Infrastructure Management, during a ‘Huntahan’ Forum, hosted by veteran media personality Toto Ylagan at the Quezon Memorial Circle
ICA is a ‘worldwide training, certification and inspection body.’
A former member of the Comelec Advisory Council, Dy, cited Republic Act 9369 (Automated Election System) which states that there should be a TEC Report 30 days before the elections, “unless it is antedated by the Comelec.”
The TEC report should contain the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of the Miru System, which is owned by a Korean company that won in the public bidding for the May 2025 national and local elections.
But until now, he said, there are no reports about the Comelec’s compliance of the TEC report which would be alarming, reiterating the possible disenfranchisement of votes of Filipinos overseas.
“It’s (TEC Report submission) very vital because the votes cast by Filipino overseas through an online voting system, which is ongoing, would be disenfranchised especially if there would be someone who would question or look for it.”
He said that another concern was Miru’s use of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) device which is supposed to contain vital information, specifically the election returns or votes cast by the people.
Acknowledging other safety measures introduced by Miru for automated elections, Dy, however, expressed doubts about the use of USB which could be easily hacked, among others.
He said that it’s the first time that the Comelec and Miru would claim that they would conduct a simultaneous transmission of the election returns.
” There’s no such thing as simultaneous transmission from the precinct level to the central server of the Comelec.”
The holder of the USB device should be accountable, he stressed.
“I still believe in the integrity of the automated elections, but it’s hard to have the security of the votes unless the TEC Report and the International Certification were submitted on time,” Dy said.
