COMELEC-Cebu Province, Election results through VCMs 99.9% accurate

CEBU, Philippines - The Commission on Elections-Cebu is confident that the results of the vote counting machines (VCMs) in the May 9 automated elections will remain accurate.

Lawyer Eliseo Labaria, acting Comelec-Cebu election supervisor, relayed to the media that the machines showed at least 99.9 percent accuracy based on the partial results of the ongoing manual verification of the counts.

A random manual audit is being conducted to determine whether the machine count under an election automated system is accurate based on a manual verification.

Labaria explained that the verification system is intended to refute insinuations against the credibility of the vote counting machines.

In the past automated elections, the accuracy of the machines was perfect, Labaria recounted.

He, however, said they are still waiting for the official findings of the National Citizen’s Movement for Free Elections, an independent group, to be released soon.

“Sila (NAMFREL) mopagawas ani kun acceptable ba o dili ang result sa election or credible ba ang elections nato,” he said.

NAMFREL sits as the chair of the Random Manual Audit Committee with Comelec and Philippine Statistics Authority as the committee’s members.

As a rule, if discrepancy occurs and exceeds the allowable margin of an aggregate difference of 10 votes, the RMA Committee will perform, among others, the manual counting of ballots or receipts for the position with discrepancy.

However, the results of the manual audit does not delay the proclamation of the winning candidates based on the results of the automated election system.

Republic Act 9369, which amended the law that authorized the Comelec to use an automated election system, provides for the conduct of a random manual audit in one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the Comelec in each province and city. – (FREEMAN)