Labeled ballot boxes in different provinces are piled up in a file photo.
(UNTV NEWS)
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) believes that the vote counting machines have accurately counted the votes casted in the ballots based on the results of the Random Manual Audit (RMA).
RMA is a process required by the automated elections law wherein the ballots from selected precints will be manually counted and the result is compared to the electronically generated result of the vote counting machines.
For the 2016 elections, only the votes casted for the president, vice president, members of the House of Representatives, governors and mayors have been counted.
After going over the ballots from 678 out of the 715 randomly selected clustered precincts, the RMA committee has recorded an overall accuracy rate of 99.884%.
“If there is systemic error, you will notice that the accuracy rate of every candidate will be different. Here, you could see the accuracy rates are almost the same. So, we can say as far as validation and verification is concerned, the resulting accuracy rate is reliable,” said Flor Barona of PSA.
Members of the RMA committee have explained that most of the variances found are due to the inability of some voters to properly shade the oval corresponding to the candidate of their choice.
The National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), who is a member of the RMA committee, recommends intensifying voters education in the next automated elections
“They encircled the number. They shaded the name of the candidate or they shaded the oval after the name,” said Tammie Lipana, alternate chairman NAMFREL/RMA committee.
However, 14 ballot boxes that had already been subjected to the 1st level audit of the RMA team has not been processed by the RMA committee for the 2nd level audit because some ballots have been missing.
COMELEC is still investigating why these boxes from different areas of the country are lacking in the number of ballots that are supposed to be in it.
“The missing ballots can be attributed to the mishandling of the board of election inspectors or the RMA team that were appointed by the COMELEC,” said Temie Lambino, COMELEC Regional Director.
The committee also has not yet taken custody of some ballot boxes but it hopes to get all of it this weekend.
“We will be coming up with a complete report with analysis 2 weeks from now,” COMELEC Commissioner Luie Tito Guia assured.
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