A poll watchdog yesterday warned of the possibility of cheating in the forthcoming May 9, 2016, elections despite assurances that the automated election system (AES) source code is “secure.” Source code reviewer Dr. Pablo Manalastas said he does not discount the possibility of vote rigging and electoral cheating in this year’s general elections, stressing that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. may connive to favor political candidates. “They put enough security to make it hard for outsiders to use the system to cheat. But, if they want to cheat, they can do that,” Manalastas, a retired professor of the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Information Systems and Computer Science, told the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee hearing on the Automated Election System yesterday. “The system is secure, but hacking the system can be done through the cooperation of people who are in charge of the [...]
