OPEN LETTER: From Loida Nicolas Lewis, New York, New York.

April 27, 2010

Members, House of Congress

Members, House of Senate

Re: SMARTMATIC (MAY 10 Philippine Elections)

We are writing to express our concerns on the most important elections in the
Philippines on May 10, 2010 for national, provincial, city and municipal positions.

For this electoral process, the Automated Project Contract for the use of an automated
election system was signed by the Philippine Commission on Elections and a joint
venture corporation named Smartmatic TIM Corporation with an address in Makati City,
Philippines. The fee is Php 7,191,483, 739.48. Smartmatic and TIM Corporation shall
maintain and operate the project on a full-time basis for the entire duration. Smartmatic
Corporation is incorporated in Florida and lists its world headquarters at Bocaraton,
Florida, United States of America. Nowhere in the Automated Project Contract that
shows the country where this corporation is incorporated. The Florida Register of
companies shows that Smartmatic Corporation was incorporated in Florida in 2000. One
investigation revealed that Venezuelan officials were behind the incorporation of
Smartmatic. According to registry documents that went missing, the incorporation of
Smartmatic took place in the Fifth Mercantile Registry located in the ground floor of
Tower B in Cubo Negro Building in Chuaro, Caracas. The head of the said Registry was
the daughter of Venezuela’s Vice President Jose Vicente. One report noted after a
meeting in Chicago of Cook County and Chicago’s city officials that unknown
Venezuelan investors operating via proxy European ventures could indeed be the
controlling power behind Smartmatic. In the registry of the Amsterdam Chamber of
Commerce, it was registered under a different name, Smartmatic International Holding
B.V., and the sole shareholder is Amola Investments N.V. and this sole shareholder was
incorporated in the Registry of the Chamber of Commerce of Curacao under number
91615. A search showed, however, that Amola Investments N.V. did not exist in the
Curacao Chamber of Commerce. The incorporation number 91615 contained
information not related to Amola Investments but to Smartmatic International Group
N.V. . Some key investors of Smartmatic International are Venezuelans. The Managing
Director of Smartmatic International Holding B.V. as shown in the Amsterdam Registry
is Trust International Management (T.I.M.) B.V. and both companies operate from the
same address. There is reason to believe that Smartmatic has connections to the Hugo
Chavez’ regime in Venezuela. When SMARTMATIC’s acquisition of Sequioa Voting
Systems (USA incorporated corporation) was being investigated by the USA
Government if it has possible ties with the Venezuelans Government, Smartmatic
withdrew in December 2006 and sold Sequioa so its company ownership was never
clarified.In Article 14 of the Automated Project Contract, it provides that all notices and
other communications required or permitted, shall be sent either by facsimile,
personally, by registered mail or electronic mail at the numbers or addresses indicated
below and for Smartmatic, it’s Carolina Caruso, No. 4, Stafford House, Garrison
Savanah St., Michael, Barbados WI, BB 14038. It says only SMARTMATIC and the
position of Carolina Caruso is not known. Since the name used is SMARTMATIC, it is
not clear which of these SMARTMATIC corporations in Barbados is involved in the
Philippines. These are the SMARTMATIC corporations on the Barbados Corporate
Registry: SMARTMATIC SERVICE CORPORATION (31299), SMARTMATIC
INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION (24285), SMARTMATIC SERVICES
CORPORATION (25239), SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL VOTING
CORPORATION (27598), SMARTMATIC PROJECT MANAGEMENT
CORPORATION (28662) and SMARTMATIC DEPLOYMENT CORPORATION
(30338). Then in the signature page of the contract, Armando R. Yanes with a title Chief
Financial Officer of the SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION. No
address is indicated under the name of Armando R. Yanes. If the latter is not an officer
of the corporation, there is also no showing of any report that he was authorized by the
Board of Directors of SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION to enter
into contracts. In the list of documents attached to the contract, there is no sworn
corporate acknowledgement showing that he had full authority to sign the contract on
behalf of the Smartmatic International Corporation.

The contract showed that is is between the Commission on Elections and

SMARTMATIC-TIM Corporation, a newly organized corporation in the Philippines. If
there is a court judgement against this joint venture corporation in the future, it can be
enforced only against this corporation. Article 24.1 of the contract states that TIM
Corporation and SMARTMATIC bind themselves jointly and severally for all the
obligations and liabilities that might arise out of this contract. It mentions
SMARTMATIC but there is no indication of the identity of the SMARTMATIC
company involved. The Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) can still
require SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION to clarify these legal
questions while the contract is being implemented and hold any payment under the letter
of credit until these issues are clarified (authority of Armando R. Yanes, articles of
incorporation of the Smartmatic Corporation involved, etc.). In any international
contract especially this contract with SMARTMATIC involving multi-billion pesos, the
corporate name of the foreign company and its incorporation papers shall be clear so that
any complaint to be filed by the Philippine Government in the future can be directed
against the specific corporation involved. Further, the Commission on Elections failed to
include in the dispute resolution process the following contractual provisions: secure
SMARTMATIC agreement to accept service; waive Smartmatic’s Forum non
conveniens FNC) defense, and stipulation on the country or countries where asset
recovery will be sought. But since the Automated Project Contract was entered between
the Commission on Elections and SMARTMATIC-TIM joint venture corporation, it is
assumed that the liability of shareholders for the corporation’s debts and obligations is
limited to their capital investment in the corporation.

The COMMISSON ON ELECTIONS by entering into a contract with Smartmatic has

let the public down. With roughly 80% of all computer crimes perpetrated by insiders,
the Filipinos have reason to worry. Smartmatic alone wrote the code and maintains the
hardware. Recently in Arizona, USA , an elections division programmer admitted in
2006 that he flipped votes and rigged the results provided by a Diebold tabulator on the
direction of his boss in the Pima County, Arizona Elections Divisions. A former Diebold
contractor recently blew the whistle on electronic manipulation of votes. Republican
cyber security expert said that electronic voting systems are inherently insecure.
Electronic voting machines can be hacked easily. Both tabulator and optical scanners
can be manipulated. Even

if voters fill out paper ballots, their votes become insecure when they are scanned by an
electronic optical scanner. Optical scanners that count paper ballots and electronic
tabulators and data memory cards are all owned by SMARTMATIC and these are to be
used in the May 10, 2010 elections secretly and privately record and count the votes
using their proprietary softwares that are unavailable to the public and political parties
for oversight and acceptability. The Filipinos have reasons to fear the vulnerability of
these machines to count and tabulate votes to hacking that can produce false results. We
are afraid that the elections in the Philippines will be determined by unknown
programmers and unknown program hackers. This is in effect destroying the Filipinos
right to vote in fair elections in the Philippines. Hand-counted audits are needed
nationwide. The alarm is sounded for Filipino voters to rescue the elections’ credibility.
It’s going to require the response of the entire Filipino nation.

Source code review is a substitute for public counting. If this can be reviewed, we will
know how the votes marks are interpreted, how votes are assigned to the elected
candidates, how votes are tallied, what data are saved for back-up later, how the precinct
elections returns are generated, how it is digitally signed by the Board of Election
Inspectors, how the transmission, to the municipal canvassing computers and other
destinations are carried out, what details are placed in the audit logs and whether the
details are sufficient. With a source code review conducted by people we trust, the
computerized counting of votes although carried out in secret by the PCOS computers
will be revealed to us. The final source of the PCOS and CCS and all of its components
shall be made available and open any interested party or group which may conduct their
own code review so that they can take the code apart to understand what it is doing. This
is a requirement in the Automated Project Contract. But one major problem is that the
COMELEC could not fulfill this sacred duty of source code review as Smartmatic has
only a binary license (not source license). With binary license to operate, the PCOS
computer hardware and software owned by the Dominion Voting Systems of Canada,
using a copy of the source code is not part of Smartmatic’s binary license presented by
Smartmatic to COMELEC. This is probably the reason why no group has managed to
conduct a source code review.

Unlike in USA, everything is in place for the elections and free of manipulation. In the
Philippines, we have few days left before the May 10th election but there are many risks
and vulnerabilities of this automation election. These are the danger signs: the entire
batch of 82,000 precinct count optical machines scanners (PCCOS), their component
servers, printers, generators, 180,640 memory cards, and 82,000 batteries have not been
fully tested, the source code (brain of the machines) remains highly restricted and there
has been no independent systems audit report released to date, no independent party has
been designated to handle private keys that would unlock PCOS machines prior to
transmission of results, ballot printing has been drastically delayed, critical contracts,
instructions, plans and procedures have not been made public, no sufficient training for
230,000 teachers who would be tapped for election, and voters have not been
sufficiently informed of new clustered precinct assignments.

We appeal to the United States of America Government to investigate Smartmatic and its
operations worldwide particularly in the Philippines where it entered into a contract with
the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to maintain and operate the
automated election system for the May 10, 2010 elections nationwide.

Thank you.

Very respectfully yours,

Loida Nicolas Lewis

115 East, 57th Street (Suite 1430)

New York, New York

10022

646 206 1000 (US Cellphone)

212 756 8900 ext 12 (Office line)

Loida834@tmo.blackberry.net (Email Address)

loida.lewis@gmail.com cc to Lblack@tlcbeatrice.com ; lrsoriano143@yahoo.com