Elections as an instrument of political control 157 software of the system it was offering and it fraudulently misrepresented as its own the ISO 9001 certication of a Taiwanese company, Jarltech (which was not at all part of the purported Smartmatic joint venture). Del Rosario also resigned as chairman of the Comelec's Technical Working Group because he said he “couldn't stomach the way the commission was handling the automation project”. Moreover, the election watchdog AES Watch observed, “The Comelec continues to turn a blind eye to the fact that Smartmatic can never comply with Philippine laws because it is another foreign company – Canada- and US-based Dominion Voting Systems – that owns and can solely decide to release or not, for independent review of political parties and interested groups, the election computer program including the source code. In an ofcial letter, Dominion Voting Systems, according to the IT consultant of Chairman Melo and now Chairman Brillantes, does not, and will not, authorize Smartmatic, the contracted party of Comelec, to release the source code to other interested parties including political parties. Such is contrary to RA 9369 and a deance to the May 6 and September 21, 2010 rulings of the Supreme Court… compelling the Comelec to release the source code and other vital election documents that would help further validate earlier ndings that the Smartmatic PCOS is fatally awed and should never be used in any Philippine election again.” That Dominion letter made it abundantly clear that, even as early as March 2011, Comelec had already been formally advised that Smartmatic did not own the software code for its voting and counting machines. Thus, Comelec ofcials were brazenly lying to the Filipino people when they shamelessly tried to justify themselves later – in mid-2012 – by claiming that they were not aware of this crucial deciency at the time they exercised the option to purchase Smartmatic's PCOS machines. Based on the Philippines' poll automation law and Comelec's Terms of Reference, not owning both the hardware and the software of its voting machines would have disqualied Smartmatic outright from any consideration as an automated election system provider. What makes Smartmatic such a favorite among Comelec ofcials? In the bidding for the 2010 elections, the then Comelec commissioners – which included the four who voted now with Brillantes to purchase the Smartmatic machines – obviously tailored the bid specications and terms of reference to virtually exclude every other bidder except this obscure Venezuelan rm with US connections. Then, they overlooked and simply ignored all of Smartmatic's performance delays and spec violations without ever even suggesting that Smartmatic be penalized for these. After the 2010 elections that many observers with information technology experience and expertise correctly perceived as questionable, the previous Comelec Advisory Committee (CAC) of technical experts, after sifting through the evidence, formally recommended, in June 2010, “that the Comelec NOT exercise the option to purchase the AES [automated election system]” of