Elections as an instrument of political control 163 In a display of ignorance (or perhaps stupidity), Smartmatic salesman Cesar Flores (from Venezuela) told the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Elections System that “everything that happens in the machine is digitally signed”, a statement that showed that he had absolutely no idea of what a digital signature is or what it does. That, of course, is understandable since Flores is a sociology student masquerading as an IT expert. Amazingly, supposedly lie-discerning senators and congressmen allow him to pull the wool over their eyes every time he speaks. To explain why the requirement of “digital signatures” is so critical, it should be understood that a digital signature is a unique set of electronic “keys” (one private and one public) assigned to a specic individual. The use of the private key for encrypting a sender's electronic message and the use of the public key by authorized recipients for decrypting that message allows third parties to authenticate that the sender indeed sent the message, that the message was sent at a specic time, and that the message had not been tampered with in any way during transmission. The nature of this authentication also prevents the sender from later disavowing responsibility for the message and his/her sending of it at the time stamped on it. Why is it so crucial that the BEI members – who are mandated (in a manual system) to afx their signatures and thumb marks on the ofcial election canvass sheet – “sign” the electronically transmitted election returns (in an automated system) with their personal digital signatures? At the risk of being repetitive, the reasons are fundamental to election credibility: 1) these will establish the authenticity of the electronic messages sent, 2) these will ensure their integrity (non-tampering), and 3) these will assign ofcial accountability for every election return. Without personal digital signatures, no one will be able to verify who actually transmitted a specic election return, whether that return was altered in any way during transmission, and which individual can be held responsible for it. The decision of Comelec commissioners to eliminate the use of personal digital signatures for election ofcials means that non-authorized persons can readily impersonate electronically a specic election ofcial and maliciously alter data being sent. It also makes it much easier for Smartmatic – and Comelec – to offer excuses for discrepancies in the date and time stamps on various election returns. In fact, this is precisely what happened. With Comelec disabling the personal digital signatures requirement, fake election results could be transmitted from polling precincts to the national canvassing servers from machines that could stay anonymous – like the 65 PCOS machines discovered in a house in Antipolo – and leave no auditable trace. How, without personal digital signatures, can anyone be held accountable for any of the transmitted results? Indeed, why should any BEI ofcial accept any responsibility for any election return? Without the personal digital signatures of the by-law-