Elections as an instrument of political control 167 off. Some simply could not understand the issues, even when these were simplied as much as possible. Some were simply too lazy to study the issues. Some were provided incentives to ignore the real issues and to just follow the approved story line. And some must have been told by the vested interests their newspaper or TV station represented not to offend the powers that pay for the ads. So it came to pass that Philippine media uncritically bought into the deception perpetuated by Brillantes and his patrons that the 2013 automated elections were a “success” when, by any reasonable standard, they were not. Without a public review of the source code of the programs used, the voting public cannot know how their votes were counted and, without “access to the count”, there can be no transparency and, hence, no credibility. Without the personal digital signatures of the mandated-by-law election ofcials, there were no valid election returns and, hence, no legitimate way to proclaim winners. With non-specication rewritable CF memory cards and accessible ports on the PCOS machines, tampering of election results was made possible in unsecure locations all over the country. With the criminal disabling by Comelec of all mechanisms whereby voters might possibly validate and authenticate the results, it was clear that wholesale electronic vote rigging happened during the 2013 polls. This has to be repreatedly emphasized: Computerized election results that are not veriable by the voters cannot be credible. Therefore, such elections are null and void. The 2016 automated polls Just before he stepped down as Comelec chairman, Brillantes effectively admitted that Comelec's implementation of a computerized election system had been awed all along. In a hearing of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) on September 18, 2014, the following exchange between Brillantes and Senator Alan Peter Cayetano took place (and was reported by Prof. Nelson Celis, spokesman of poll watchdog AES Watch): Cayetano: “Pwede bang mangyari sa buong Pilipinas… apat lang ang binoto ng isang tao pero labindalawa po ang bibilangin noong makina?”[“Can it happen all over the Philippines… that a person votes for only four (candidates) but the machines count votes for twelve?”] Brillantes: “Tama ho iyon.” [“That's right.”] Cayetano: “Did it happen, Mr. Chair, only in 2013 or pati 2010?” Brillantes: “Nakita ho naming iyan sa 2013, hindi pa ho naming nai-check iyong 2010.” [“We saw it in 2013, we haven't yet checked 2010.”] Cayetano: “Then how can we decide on having a manual or automated (election) in 2016 if we can't assure our people that walang dagdag-bawas [there will be no manipulation of the count]?... This is the rst time I've