Congress won't touch nullified votes — Nograles

The joint canvassing committee of Congress will not consider the P2.6 million nullified votes despite the insistence of the camp of vice presidential aspirant Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas II, House Speaker Prospero Nograles said Thursday. In a text message, Nograles, co-chairman of the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), said the 18-man panel is not the proper venue to count — if ever — the nullified votes. "This is an issue that is proper in an 'election protest' in the proper venue where votes can be recounted swiftly by merely cross-checking the actual ballots cast and the electronic image and the pictures of the ballots that entered the [Precinct Count Optical Scan] machine," he said. On Wednesday, Roxas legal counsel Roland Solis insisted on a manual audit of the nullified votes, which he said would "materially affect" the results for the election of vice president. As of Wednesday night the race for the second top position in the land was a close match between Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Roxas, with the former only ahead by less than 200,000 votes. "If indeed there was a technical glitch in how the machines had properly read the null votes--whether these are indeed overvotes or undervotes—it could be a disenfranchisement of about five percent of the entire voting population," said Solis. The Commission on Elections, however, has said that manually counting the nullified votes was useless because the votes are either non-existent or non-distinguishable. Comelec commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said null votes could mean an overvote or an undervote. Votes were also nullified in case of erroneous shading of ballots. He said an undervote would not be counted if a person does not vote for any particular candidate for a said position. "You can't count votes that are not there," he said. Comelec chairman Jose Melo added that no vote could be counted if a voter voted for two candidates for one position, as canvassers cannot second-guess the voter. The joint canvassing committee has resumed its canvassing of votes. They hope to finish the canvass within the day in time for the adjournment sine die on Friday. - KBK, GMANews.TV