Comelec: No discrepancies in RMA despite 1.3 million ‘overvoting’ cases

MANILA, Philippines — Despite over 1.3 million cases of overvoting reported in the May 12 midterm elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) maintains that the ongoing Random Manual Audit (RMA) has so far yielded no discrepancies between electronic results and manual tallies.

Speaking at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay Forum yesterday, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said that 176 ballot boxes out of the 726 randomly selected clustered precincts have undergone manual audit, with zero variances detected between the election returns and the manual count.

“So far, we haven’t seen any discrepancies in all the ballots audited. Hopefully, that continues because it’s proof that all our machines functioned correctly,” he said.

Garcia explained that overvoting is not considered fraud or machine error but a common voter mistake, especially in national races like the senatorial and party-list contests.

He added that the 1.3 million overvoting incidents account for only about two percent of the 57 million voters who participated.

In the 2022 elections, around 900,000 instances of overvoting were recorded.

While the figure has increased this year, Garcia emphasized that the RMA confirms the credibility of the automated election system as it verifies the accuracy of machine counts through manual validation of selected precincts.

Watchdogs’ concerns

However, election watchdogs and civil society groups are not reassured.

At a press conference on yesterday, the Alyansa ng Nagkakaisang Mamamayan and the Church Leaders Council for National Transformation presented eight troubling observations, ranging from data transmission delays to questions about software updates and the handling of overvotes.

“We are not attacking or accusing any group or any agency,” said convenor and former senatorial candidate Alex Lacson, adding that the group merely aims to call attention to possible systemic flaws.

The first five points focused on the nearly two-hour delay in the release of partial and unofficial election results on May 12.

Groups questioned the Comelec over the need for an intermediary server, or a third data center, to transmit results from clustered precincts to stakeholders such as the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) and the media.

The initial wave of results was released shortly before 9 p.m., although Garcia said that servers began receiving data as soon as polls closed at 7 p.m.

By early Tuesday morning, some observers noted that the reported results had decreased by approximately five million votes, an inconsistency Garcia attributed to “uncleaned” data.

The sixth concern addressed voter allegations of mismatched votes, in which the printed receipt did not reflect their selections.

Comelec spokesman John Rex Laudiangco stressed on election day that the poll body is taking these accusations “with a grain of salt.”

“Who can really tell who you voted for? If there’s really a question in the process, let’s subject it to legalities,” Laudiangco told reporters on May 12 as the complaints circulated on social media.

He also noted that since the shift to automated elections in 2010, none of the 3,000 fraud-related petitions filed before the courts or electoral tribunals have altered any election outcome.

Meanwhile, the seventh observation shed light on the 17 million overvotes, which, according to NAMFREL data, pertain solely to the senatorial race.

According to NAMFREL, 35 million overvotes were logged in total, with 3.3 million from the party-list category.

NAMFREL questioned how the overvotes were counted, asking “whether they are based on the number of marks beyond maximum or if it is an instance of the overvote in a single ballot,” said national chairman Angel Averia Jr. on Friday. — EJ Macababbad