Random manual audit may take a month -De Villa

The Random Manual Audit (RMA) of 1,145 precincts nationwide might take over a month to finish partly because of delays in the delivery of the reports to the Commission on Elections in Manila, the RMA Technical Working Group (TWG) said late Wednesday. According to the RMA-TWG Chair Henrietta De Villa, the areas that have already completed their RMA as of May 11 are Zamboanga del Sur (1st legislative district), Zamboanga City (1st legislative district), and Pampanga (1st to 4th legislative districts). The RMA-TWG has received 51 RMA results so far, a mere five percent of all precincts that were required to undergo RMA, De Villa said. She explained that officers conducting the RMA in the rest of the provinces are waiting for the rest of the precincts in their district to finish their respective reports before sending these to the Comelec, stalling the TWG's evaluation. "[We urge them] not to wait for the other reporters… baka kasi nagtitipid sa cost of sending, kaya aantayin lahat ng report na matapos sa kanilang [district]… eh isang taon pa kami mag-aantay niyan (They might be scrimping on the cost of sending, that’s why they’re waiting for all reports to finish in their district. But we’ll be waiting the whole year for that)," De Villa told reporters. De Villa urged each precinct to send its reports to Comelec in Manila as soon as it finishes with its RMA. Five precincts for each of the 229 legislative districts nationwide were chosen to undergo the RMA, which would check the results produced by the poll counting machines against the manually counted ballots. "I would say [at the rate things are going], [we will take] about a month [to finish]. If we receive it by Friday or even next week, [all mechanisms are activated now anyway] to look into the report [so that we can quickly give an] evaluation," De Villa said, explaining that once the TWG finds “substantial" discrepancies in the report, it will recommend the opening of all ballot boxes in the district concerned. She stressed, however, that discrepancies in the results do not necessarily reflect inaccuracies in the reading of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. She also said that RMA reports do not show whether discrepancies were caused by overvotes or any unusual marks which might have been considered by officers as valid but the machine did not actually read. "They can't give any appreciation or discretion on the variance [between the PCOS results and the manual count]. May variance pero hindi naman marami (There’s variance but not a lot)," De Villa said The TWG has already asked the National Statistics Office to create a program to determine the acceptable margin of variance between results from the manual and automated counts, beyond which the rest of the precincts from the district would undergo a manual count. "This is why automated should be it. Mahirap, 'di matantya ang oras dahil mano-mano (It’s difficult, we can’t estimate the time required because it’s done manually). They list down unusual markings without any discretion kaya matagal (and thus it takes time)," she said. De Villa added she received a call from a member of former President Joseph Estrada’s camp, informing her of 200 discrepancies in one of the precincts in Metro Manila. "They did not describe the discrepancy. Anybody can claim 200 discrepancies, but the best thing is to wait for all reports from Manila [to verify if they indeed exist]. It could happen that what has been manually recognized as a vote, the machine could not have recognized," she said, adding that no details on the precinct number and area was reported by the Erap camp. De Villa also said that the TWG has already asked Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle to direct all provincial election supervisors (PES) and election officers to hasten the transmittal of reports. “The RMA team in a certain legislative district will give to their PES the report of their minutes and audit returns. And then the PES is supposed to bring that and send that to the Comelec national office. The national office will give that to the TWG," she said.—JV, GMANews.TV