IN December 2018, Namfrel petitioned the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for accreditation as a “citizen’s arm,” specifically requesting permission on three items: 1) to be allowed to monitor Comelec’s implementation of the automated election system (AES); 2) to have access to data that would allow them to observe Comelec’s “random manual audit” (RMA) of the automated vote-counting; and 3) to allow them access to complete election data for posting in Namfrel’s Open Election Data website.