Vote Receipts and Audits Distract from Core Electoral Issues, Internet Voting Raises Alarming Questions on Verification, CenPEG Warns

MANILA – The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) today expressed deep concern over the Commission on Elections’ (COMELEC) continued push for internet voting, citing the lack of verification mechanisms and transparency, particularly in the experience of overseas Filipino voters.

CenPEG Fellow and election systems analyst Hector Barrios criticized the overreliance on vote receipts and audits as solutions to electoral fraud, arguing that these offer little protection against the core vulnerabilities in the automated election system.

"Vote receipts and audits have no place in the voting act or process," Barrios said. "Our preoccupation with them only throws us farther and farther away from the real issue of accountability and transparency."

Barrios emphasized that the only function of a vote receipt, as currently proposed, is to confirm that the machine read the ballot correctly. However, reading the ballot is just one step in a longer chain of processes.

"Reading, however, is just one of several steps the machine performs," Barrios explained. "After reading, it must sort the votes by candidate, register them in a data file, and then, at the end of the day, count the votes stored in that file. All of these steps are controlled by an application program and depend on a data file — both of which can be tampered with, either from outside through hacking or from within the system itself."

He acknowledged that suggestions such as those recommending that machines only connect to the internet after election returns are printed — could help reduce risks of external interference. However, this does not eliminate the danger of internal tampering.

Barrios also questioned the practical use of vote receipts:

"Can individual voters use their respective receipts to verify that their vote was taken up correctly in the election returns? How would that be possible? Or can they be used to verify the election return itself? If so, someone would have to collect all the receipts, tally them, and compare the sums to the official results — all before voters leave the precinct."

He concluded that since receipts would not be released to voters, any verification would fall to third parties — undermining the notion of true voter verification.

In addition to these technical concerns, CenPEG highlights the worrying accounts from overseas voters who participated in internet voting pilot tests. Many reported that there was no way to verify whether their votes were correctly recorded and counted.

"It is worrisome that COMELEC continues to promote internet voting despite these gaps,” CenPEG stressed. “Without a clear, secure, and voter-verifiable system, internet voting remains a black box — especially vulnerable to manipulation and distrust.”

CenPEG urges COMELEC to come up with mechanisms with full transparency, auditability, and genuine voter verification firmly in place.###

REFERENCES:Hector Barrios, CenPEG FellowRoland Simbulan, CenPEG Chair, 09272493295For more information, please contact: Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)   Email: cenpeg.info@gmail.com  | Phone: 09171141405  |  Website: www.cenpeg.org