Some precincts to manually check votes

CEBU, Philippines - The Commission on Elections will identify at least one precinct in every congressional district nationwide where the Board of Election Inspectors will be tasked to conduct manual counting of votes casts immediately after the elections on May 10 and compare them with the automated results. 

An official of the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections is already expecting that there will be conflicting figures.

There are eight congressional districts in Cebu City and Cebu Province that are part of the 222 legislative districts nationwide where the Comelec will also conduct manual counting of the votes cast.

“I’m sure there will be different figures of the results of the two modes of counting the votes,” said Telibert Laoc, who used to be the Namfrel’s executive director and now a member of said Comelec’s watchdog, when The FREEMAN interviewed him after he spoke during the seminar-workshop of journalists sponsored by the Philippine Press Institute at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel & Casino.

Laoc, a native from Sibonga town in southern Cebu, was tasked to speak the issue about “Watching the Elections, Through the Lens of Civil Society” where he advised the youth to teach their elders, particularly their grandparents, how to vote their favorite candidates by just shading the oval beside the candidates’ names just like what people betting on Lotto do.

The Comelec will not announce yet which precincts will conduct manual counting of the votes cast after the elections as one way to ensure that the outcome would be real.

Comelec-7 regional director Ray Rene Buac, who spoke ahead of Laoc in the same forum last Wednesday, explained that the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines will count even half-shaded ovals, but he is not sure if the PCOS will also count ovals that only have a very small portion shaded.

“Pero nagtoo ko nga ang pen nga gamiton sa election day kadtong lapad og agi nga usa lang ka badlis mapuno na ang oval aron sigurado nga maihap g’yod ang botos. Sa manual counting ang mga sakop sa BEI maoy mohukom kon ang botos iphon ba o dili. Ang isyu diha nga tan-awon kon duna ba g’yoy intent ang usa ka botante nga mobotar sa maong kandidato,” Laoc explained.

Buac said during the information campaign to be conducted in the barangays and sitios, they will explain to the voters not to make unnecessary markings, or fold or tear the ballots so it will not be rejected by the PCOS machine.

The election officials said it will take at least five minutes for a voter to complete the voting by choosing his or her candidates from those running for president, vice president, senators, congressmen, mayor, vice mayor and councilors in the cities or towns and members of the provincial board in the province. — Rene U. Borromeo/BRP   (FREEMAN NEWS)