The Philippine government’s Commission on Elections (Comelec) recently took a bold step by announcing it would usher in a new Internet-based voting system – and that they wanted to test it by having computer hacks from all over the world try to crack it.
According to a recent article posted on All Headline News, the voting system developed by Spanish firm Scytl Consortium, will be officially ‘pilot-tested’ from July 10 to July 30 in Singapore, where there are reportedly 26,853 registered absentee voters. The system itself is worth $452,000.
Of course, the results of these test polls – whether the hackers succeed in cracking the system or not – will be non-binding, which means it will not affect official elections results.
To help recruit some good hacking talent, the Comelec has approached the Washington-based non-profit organization International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) to collect professional hackers to test the system’s security. However, a formal request still has not been issued to the organization, and Comelec and IFES are still in discussion.
Comelec commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. told local reporters he was pleased with the progress Scytl had made on the system, a system which has seen similar use in the U.S., Switzerland and Belgium.
“When Scytl presented the system, everybody was impressed on the security features,” Tuason said. “It is covered by international patent and it has been declared secured by no less than Switzerland and everyone in the global community should respect that decision.”
The Comelec has previously pushed for the full implementation of the Internet voting system in Singapore but Senator Richard Gordon of the Philippine Senate succeeded in stopping it. According to reports, Gordon wanted a computerized casting and counting system to be deployed instead in selected provinces in the country. The Comelec stopped because it lacked enough time to prepare for this type of system, however.
If this is just the first part of an emergent trend in the testing of government-owned electronic security systems, then hackers may be seen less as anarchists and criminals and more as regular – even essential – parts of the security industry as we vault even further into the digital age.