BAGUMBAYAN-VNP MOVEMENT, INC., AND RICHARD J. GORDON, ON HIS BEHALF AND ON BEHALF OF OTHER CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES SIMILARLY SITUATED, VS. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS.

Ruling

accordingly fined. The grounds for the same were centered on the petitioners' claim that Chairman Brillantes failed to comply with his commitments to the Court as manifested during the May 8, 2013 oral arguments. These commitments included making the source code available for review, and granting more time to parties to comply with the requirements to do so. As the facts attendant to the charge arose exclusively from the factual milieu gleamed from the instant petition, the Court will resolve both claims on their respective merits. For G.R. No. 206784 Petitioners Tan Dem, et al. allege [23] that the COMELEC erred in promulgating Resolution No. 8786, or the "Revised General Instructions for the BEI On the Voting, Counting, and Transmission of Results in Connection With the May 10, 2010, National and Local Elections," approved on March 4, 2010, which reversed Section 38 of COMELEC Resolution No. 8739, or the "General Instructions for the BEIs on the Voting, Counting, and Transmission of Results in Connection with the May 10, 2010 National and Local Elections." In Resolution No. 8739, it was required for the members of the BEI to insert their respective security keys intended for the digital signature in the iButton security key receptacle. However, COMELEC Resolution No. 8786 directed all the BEIs nationwide not to sign the election returns transmitted electronically with their digital signatures. [24] Due to the foregoing, Tan Dem, et al. filed a separate Petition for Mandamus against the COMELEC, praying that Mandamus would be granted ordering the COMELEC to use digital signatures in the electronic transmission of electronic election returns, to provide and open the source code for review by interested groups, to provide for vote verification in the casting of votes, to provide for randomness in the selection of precincts for the manual audit, and to postpone the elections until such time that provisions for the use of digital signatures, review of the source code, vote verification and randomness of manual audit are set in place. [25] Tan Dem, et al . also pray that, should the elections be held without the digital signatures and the basic security safeguards, the Court order the COMELEC to manually count the votes in the physical ballots to validate the results contained in the electronic election returns, provided, there are no signs of tampering of said physical ballots and thereby, postpone the proclamation of the candidates, or order, if the candidates are proclaimed using the electronic election returns, declare the proclaimed candidates as de facto public officers, and order the COMELEC to re-effect the manual counting, and thereby affirm or revoke the proclamation of candidates, as appropriate upon completion of the manual count. [26] The Issues The issues for resolution by the Court are four-fold: First , whether or not the petitioners have locus standi in this case; Second , whether or not the petitioners are entitled to the Writ of Ma