WHEREAS, the right of suffrage is firmly founded on the democratic principle that the people is the ultimate sovereign and the fountain of all political power;

WHEREAS, suffrage necessarily includes the right and duty of the people to uphold and protect the sanctity of the ballot;

WHEREAS, credible physical, documentary, and statistical evidence has come to light which seriously undermined the legitimacy, integrity and credibility of the 2010 and 2013 automated elections, especially those involving flagrant violations of Republic Act No. 9369 (Automated Elections Law) and related election laws, and the outright removal and/or effective dilution of the major security features of the SMARTMATIC PCOS machines such as, but not limited to the following:

1.      Ultra Violet Detectors (Sections 7 and 13) – intended to prevent the use of fake ballots and prevent the pre-loading of spurious votes into the CF cards;

2.      Source Code Review  (Section 7) – intended to insure the integrity and credibility of the automated election system by subjecting the source codes of the entire system to independent review and forensic examination;

3.      Voter Verification Paper Audit Trail  (Section 7) – intended to assure the voter that his votes had been correctly read and counted by the voting machine; and,

4.      Digital Signatures (Sections 19 and 20) – intended to authenticate all transmitted election results and prevent the transmission of fake election results via unauthorized network intrusion or hacking;

WHEREAS, the COMELEC and SMARTMATIC have repeatedly refused to seriously address these grave public concerns despite clear and uncontroverted evidence and the filing of numerous complaints before the Supreme Court, the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the AES, the Department of Justice, the Ombudsman, 22and the PNP/CIDG (Cyber Crime Unit) by different civil society groups and personalities;

WHEREAS, the legitimacy, integrity and credibility of the forthcoming 2016 elections are again seriously threatened by the same controversial removal and/or dilution of the security safeguards of the automated election system, and the very same flagrant violations of our election laws by the very same perpetrators (COMELEC and SMARTMATIC);

WHEREFORE, under these premises, WE, the citizens of the Republic of the Philippines, as the ultimate sovereign in our democratic system of government, in our respective capacities as individuals and/or members of legitimate people’s organizations, imploring the aid of Divine Providence, hereby PETITION and DEMAND that the COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS as well as the EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE and JUDICIAL BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT respect, uphold and protect our right of suffrage and the sanctity of the ballot by providing us with a totally transparent and credible system of counting, transmission and canvassing of our votes by:

1.      Faithfully complying with the minimum systems capabilities provided under Republic Act No. 9369, specifically the effective and meaningful restoration of the four (4) major security features mentioned herein; and,

2.      Programming the 2016 vote counting machines to provide each and every voter his voter receipt which shall be dropped in the old yellow ballot boxes; which, after the polls closed, shall be turned over to the local representatives of accredited citizens arms or the organized public for manual count and subsequent verification with the automated count prior to the transmission of the election results.