Poll exec nixes Roxas' request for more manual audits nationwide

A Commission on Elections (Comelec) official rejected calls from the camp of vice presidential candidate Sen. Manuel Roxas II to conduct manual audits in certain precincts nationwide said to have "nullified votes." "Hindi eh.. ang napag-usapan natin ay five clustered precincts in one legislative district [lang]. Hindi na siguro pwede [ang additional]," Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle told reporters on Friday. Tagle is also the co-chairman of the Technical Working Group in charge of the Random Manual Audit. (What we’re talking about are five clustered precincts in one legislative district. Undertaking additional random audits may not be allowed.) "Ang problema lang 'yong null votes.. baka diyan tayo magkaproblema. Pero sa nakikita naman namin, hindi binabasa ng machine, pero we still have to determine [the cause]," Tagle said, adding that the canvassing board would have to decide whether to count null votes or not. (Null votes are the issue and that’s where we might encounter a problem. We think that the machines were unable to read [the votes] but we still have to determine the cause.) "Pero as of now, hindi dapat. Maybe sa protest na 'yan, hindi sa canvassing," he added. (But right now, the matter could be handled through a protest, not through canvassing.) Earlier, the Roxas camp sought a manual count of what it said are over 2.6 million nullified votes in the senator’s known bailiwicks. [See: Roxas camp: Manual vote audit first before electoral protest] The Roxas camp also rejected calls from the Comelec to file an election protest instead. Manual audit finished by early next week While Tagle assured the random manual audit (RMA) would be finished by Monday or Tuesday next week, he also said that only "one or two" instances of triple-digit discrepancies in RMA results have been processed so far. "Ang inuuna naming dinedetermine na [root cause] ng discrepancy ay 'yong mga malalaki. 'Yong mga maliliit [ay] negligible naman. Mayroon ding mga nakita kaming triple-digit, [pero] one or two lang," Tagle said, although he did not specify the precincts. (We determine the root cause of those with big discrepancies. The small ones only have negligible discrepancies. We saw triple digit discrepancies but only once or twice.) Over 80 percent of audit results — 1,005 out of 1,145 precincts — have already been processed by the National Statistics Office, the commissioner said. "Ang hinahanap [na lang] nila 'yong root cause [ng discrepancies]. Medyo may mga double digit, pero hindi pa malaman kung ano nga ang root cause," Tagle said. (They’re looking for the root cause of the discrepancies. Some have double-digit discrepancies but the root cause of these have yet to be determined.) He noted, however, that results on hand so far revealed improper shading and overvotes as some of the sources of discrepancies from the two counts. Tagle cited a case in a Valenzuela precinct, where members of the Board of Election Inspectors doing the manual audit counted overvotes, resulting in a 100-point discrepancy between the electronic and manual counts. "'Yung mga iba naman [ay dahil sa] human error. Sa Valenzuela, 253 ata 'yong [bilang ng] machine, [pero] ang lumabas sa RMA ay 352. 'Nong chineck namin, human error nga. Nagdagdag ng 100 'yong mga boto. Nagkamali sa computation. 'Yong overvotes binilang." (Some discrepancies are due to human error. In Valenzuela, the machine counted 253 votes but the random manual audit reported 352. And when we checked, it was human error. One hundred votes were added because of an error in computation. The overvotes were counted.) — RJAB Jr./RSJ, GMANews.TV