! COMELEC MEMO No.

201412 Dated 23 February 2014 TO: Loyola Schools Student Body FROM: Ateneo Commission on Elections RE: Official Statement Regarding the System Error Official Statement Regarding the System Error that Affected 19 Courses This document aims to explain the system error that affected 19 courses of the Loyola Schools during the recently concluded Sanggunian General Elections. Through this, the Commission would like to shed light on the said system error - its causes, effects, etc. - and assure that despite this, the sanctity of the ballot and the validity of the tally were kept. The Cause and Nature of the Error Upon the release of the first partial tally, the Commission received reports regarding the miscount of votes for some positions. Zero votes were shown for these positions despite students reporting to have voted already. Right away, the Commission made sure that these students voted properly (i.e. clicked the Submit button before signing out and saw the Thank you for voting! page, which means that their vote has been sent and that there was no internet connection problem). This was immediately addressed by contacting Code Depot, the systems official programmer, specifically Mr. Garcia in order to act upon these reports and check if the system indeed has problems. Initially, Mr. Garcia asked the Commissioners to, again, make sure that these students have indeed clicked the submit button and that there was no internet connection problem, asserting that there were no code-related problems in their end. Code Depot, however, promised to continue diagnosing their program for other possible glitches. Contact between the Commission and the programmer was constant over the weekend in order to arrive at the root cause of the problem. On the morning of Monday, February 17, 2014, the Commissioners again contacted Mr. Garcia, to address the problem. The Commissioners further reiterated to Mr. Garcia that this could be a problem in the code, and not in how the students voted, because only certain courses were affected. After further inspection, Mr. Garcia finally found the error in the code and fixed it. Attached is the official statement from Mr. Garcia explaining the nature of the error.

Due to the nature of the system error, it is assured that no other courses were affected. The error, as explained by Mr. Garcia, only affected the code for the certain courses, hence, making the program reject all the votes from these courses. Mr. Garcia sent the list of the 19 courses affected with the error to the Commission on Monday, right after its discovery. And the program was finally fixed starting 11 am on the said date. In addition, Mr. Garcia also explained how the error was possible considering the fact that !

! they, too, were the programmers of the system used during the 2013 Freshmen and Special Elections. In an e-mail sent to the Commission, Mr. Garcia relayed that it was the inclusion of the amendments that complicated things. In addition, as further investigated, the problem was caused by the voting on amendments. It was the amendments voting that rejected the courses below, thus resulting to the failure of recording of the votes to these mentioned courses. Since voting on the amendments was a new feature that we added, it is unfortunate that it was it that caused the problem. Again, I deeply apologize for this exception and just to rectify things, as you asked, the system is open until tomorrow and beyond 3am tomorrow, only the courses below will be able to vote. The Implications Because of the system error, all votes starting from Wednesday until Friday from the 19 courses mentioned were rejected by the program. Votes cast using the electronic ballot on Monday morning were also affected. However, all hard ballot votes from the affected courses starting Monday and electronic ballots starting Monday, 11am, were accounted for. As stated above, only these courses are affected due to the nature of the error. For all the other courses, all votes were counted and the tally remained accurate. Steps Taken by COMELEC Aside from contacting Code Depot to check if there was an error in the code, the Commission also made certain steps to make sure that the elections remain free and fair. Remedial Actions As evidenced by the e-mail sent to the Commission, the extension of elections for the 19 courses was immediately relayed to the programmer. The extension, which was held from February 18 19, 2014, was for the specific courses that were affected so as to give them enough time to recast their votes. Also, to assure the voters that their votes were really accounted for in the tally, they were given the option to use hard ballots instead of using the automated system, which a number of voters did use. Sanctity and Secrecy of the Ballot The Commission has received numerous questions asking about how these particular courses were determined to be the only ones with a problem in the code, whether there was a database that stored all votes, whether or not votes were kept secret and not tampered, etc. Most of these questions are targeted on the question of the sanctity and the secrecy of the ballot was kept safe. First, as said earlier, these courses were determined not solely on the basis of which courses had initially zero votes in the first partial tally. The list of the courses affected by the system error was sent to the Commission by Mr. Garcia upon inspection of the code for the automated system. Second, yes, there is a database of all votes. This is used in order to determine whether or not a student has already voted since, in using the system, one will see that if one has already voted, he/she will no longer be allowed to log in. To make sure, then, that no votes are counted twice, it is necessary that there be a database containing all votes. In the admin account of the said system, with which only the Commissioners have access to, the Commissioners may search for an ID number and

! see if the student with that ID number has already voted. However, all forms (votes and tallies) are not editable even using the admin account. Hence, all votes cannot be tampered. Also, in the database, timestamps for votes are included, which enables the Commission to review the tally for a specific day. The same database is automatically tallied by the system, which means that there is no room for error in counting the votes. Moreover, in the spirit of the secrecy of the ballot, the Commissioners do not check the individual votes. When it comes to the hard ballots, during the tallying, only Commissioners may touch the ballots and input them in the system. Prosecutors from the Student Judicial Court are allowed to watch this process to make sure that the Commissioners do not tamper with the ballots. After tallying, hard ballots are torn and discarded.

Again, the Commission would like to emphasize and stress the fact that the sanctity and honesty of the recently-concluded Sanggunian General Elections were kept despite the numerous issues that branched out from the automated system failure.

Signed by:

(Sgd) Denise Anne G. Olondriz COMELEC Chief Commissioner

(Sgd.) Joyce Angeli V. Donaire COMELEC Human Resources Commissioner

(Sgd.) Juan Miguel M. Razon COMELEC Finance Commissioner

(Sgd.) Justine Alyssa C. Guino COMELEC Secretariat Commissioner

(Sgd.) James Arvin B. Ong COMELEC Logistics Commissioner