Poll watchdog verifies reports of ‘ghost precincts’

Despite the Commission on Elections' denial, a Church-based poll watchdog group has started verifying ghost precincts supposedly discovered by the private contractor in the automated elections. The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said it cannot take any chances of possible irregularities hounding the first nationwide automated polls on May 10. "Pinapakuha ko ang numero ng precincts, kina-cluster ang mga presinto. Baka nagkagulo lang [pero] ang takot namin niyan meron daw sa Manila at ARMM (We are verifying the reports now. It is possible there may be an honest mistake behind the so-called ghost precincts, but we cannot take chances. The reports said some of the ghost precincts are in Manila and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao)," PPCRV Chairwoman Henrietta de Villa said in an interview on dzXL radio. On Thursday, Comelec officials denied the more than 50 “ghost precincts" supposedly discovered by surveyors Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) hired. [See: Comelec denies 57 ‘ghost precincts’] Smartmatic-TIM's report on the issue was the basis of an article that came out on the online news site Newsbreak on Thursday. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the report of the surveyors does not actually claim that the precincts were missing and was just interpreted as "ghost precincts." Jimenez said there are many reasons why the surveyors, which were hired by Smartmatic-TIM, failed to locate the precincts. He said failure to spot the polling places doesn’t mean they do not exist. Jimenez also asked why the doubt has to immediately fall on the poll body. "Why isn’t the benefit of the doubt given on the surveyors? The weight of doubt should fall on the surveyors," he said. There are 76,340 clustered precincts for the more than 50 million registered voters expected to vote in the May 2010 polls. — LBG, GMANews.TV