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Comelec orders proclamation of some 'winning' bets nullified


Some candidates in the recently-concluded May 10 polls were wrongly proclaimed based on wrong election returns and will now have to give way to the real winners. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has ordered that the proclamation of some candidates be nullified, because they were declared “winners" based on results of the final testing and sealing (FTS) of the voting machines instead of the actual votes cast on election day. In an en banc resolution promulgated late Thursday, the Comelec said that the proclamations of candidates in Pinukpuk town in Kalinga province should be recalled because they were not based on votes cast and transmitted by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines on May 10. The poll body said that three of the 36 clustered precincts in Pinukpuk, namely clustered precincts 8, 12, and 14, transmitted results from the FTS. The error was pointed out to the Municipal Board of Canvassers (MBOC) by the watchers of the different candidates, the Comelec explained. “The error was discovered after the MBOC had already proclaimed the winning candidates based on the electronically transmitted results," it said, adding that the poll body had already ordered the MBOC to declare the rightful winners. Based on the actual votes cast, Irving B. Dasayon of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD and his running mate Salvador Cabannag were acknowledged as the duly elected mayor and vice mayor of Pinukpuk, respectively. The FTS of the PCOS machines was supposed to be conducted three to seven days before election day, ensuring that the equipment is in good working order. The Boards of Election Inspectors — composed mostly of teachers — were expected to test 10 pre-shaded ballots to check if the PCOS unit was reading the votes accurately. But the FTS was extended due to the failure of some PCOS machines to read some votes accurately, forcing the Comelec to pull out and replace all the compact flash (CF) cards in the voting machines. (See: Some poll machines fail to read votes accurately) —JV, GMANews.TV

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