Comelec confirms discrepancies in random audit

MANILA, Philippines - The Comelec confirmed yesterday that there were discrepancies in the random manual audit (RMA) when compared with the electronic results of the May 13 elections.

“There were some discrepancies and these are now being segregated already (to determine which have and don’t have issues),” Brillantes said.

He said the RMA teams (RMAT) that conducted the audit after voting hours detected the discrepancies.

When asked about the details on the discrepancies, Brillantes said he is still waiting for the initial report from Commissioner Christian Lim, the commissioner-in-charge of the RMA Committee (RMAC).

“Commissioner Lim will report weekly to us. Every en banc meeting, we will be briefed of its progress. We have agreed to come out with the full report,” he said.

RMAC chairperson Henrietta de Villa admitted there were discrepancies found among the 180 RMA results already forwarded to the committee.

She said these discrepancies could not be considered official yet, since they have to be validated first.

“We cannot say that at this point because they were mostly clerical errors,” said De Villa as she noted that the discrepancies might possibly include those that were overlooked by the RMAT.

She said the auditing of manual tallies should be completed before officially concluding there were discrepancies.

“All those that have issues will be opened, verified for variances and submitted for revalidation,” De Villa said.

 Brillantes said the variances could be due to the difference in the manual appreciation of the votes since there is a 20 percent shading threshold for the PCOS machine.

De Villa said they hope to submit the complete RMA report to the Comelec on or before June 22.

The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), which De Villa also heads, is asking the Comelec to conduct an inventory of the compact flash (CF) cards.

The PPCRV said the inventory would erase speculations that the CF cards were used in coming out with a 60-30-10 pattern in the results of the election that favored the Aquino administration candidates.

“These CF cards can be bought outside and can be used to replace the ones in the PCOS. But this has not yet been proven. With the inventory, we would know if the cards were replaced,” De Villa said.

CBCP questions proclamation

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) questioned the Comelec for the “installment basis” in proclaiming the 12 winning senators.

The CBCP-National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace (Nassa) said the installment proclamation is a violation of election rules that require the winners to be proclaimed only after all ballots are officially canvassed. – Mayen Jaymalin, Paolo Romero, Evelyn Macairan