PCOS machines to determine fate of Roxas' protest — poll official

Former senator and defeated vice presidential bet Manuel Roxas II may have filed an electoral protest with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), but a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official said Friday that any possible recount would still be based on the count of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who is being considered for the vacant Supreme Court (SC) justice post, said that since the rules of the poll body and the SC on election disputes are basically the same, the PCOS units would still be used to authenticate the ballots. "I think at the end of the day, since this is an automated elections, it would be the examination done by the PCOS machines that will prevail," Sarmiento told reporters in an interview. In his protest, Roxas is asking for the full recount of about 2.6 million null votes not counted during the national canvassing. Null votes were not counted because they were not shaded, incorrectly shaded, or the shaded ovals exceeded the number of positions available. But Sarmiento said that there are no provisions in the rules of both the Comelec and SC for a manual recount. He said that under their rules, the PCOS machines are tasked to determine the shading threshold of 50 percent. "Nung halalan, configured [ang] makina na pag less than 50 percent, hindi bibilangin. Yan siguro pag-uusapan ng PET. (During the elections, the machines were configured to not count ovals shaded less than 50 percent. Maybe that's what the PET should discuss) Will 20 percent shading show voters’ intent?" he said. He noted, however, that if there are a lot of ovals that were shaded below the threshold, the PET may initiate a manual appreciation. "That is a possibility... baka naman pwede din i-consider din yun ng PET (the PET might consider that)," he said. As for the ovals that were not shaded at all or where more than one oval was shaded for the position of vice president, the commissioner asked how Roxas' camp would be able to prove that the votes were supposed to be for him. Comelec Chairman Jose Melo had earlier said that canvassers cannot "second-guess" the voter. "Di mo rin masasabi na ako talaga choice niya (Nobody can claim that he is the choice of the voter)," he said. The final official tally of the National Board of Canvassers showed Vice President Jejomar Binay won with 14,645,574 votes over Roxas' 13,918,490 votes. — Kimberly Jane Tan/RSJ, GMANews.TV