(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The camp of Vice President Maria Leonor 'Leni Robredo has asked the Supreme Court to set the threshold for validly shaded ballots to 25%, in accordance with the rules of the Commission on Elections on manual audit for the recount of votes in the 2016 vice presidential race.
Robredo's legal counsels Romulo Macalintal and Bernadette Sardillo made the appeal in an urgent ex-parte motion filed with the high court yesterday. They asked the court to direct the head revisor to apply the correct threshold percentage as set by the Comelec in the revision, recount and re-appreciation of the ballots.
Robredo's camp claimed that under the Random Manual Audit Visual Guidelines of the Comelec, a valid mark is a mark whose score is higher than the Vote Counting Machine's (VCM) mark detection threshold of 20 to 25% or higher of the oval.
The Comelec guidelines provide that a valid mark is one that the VCM always recognises as a vote intention and once cast, counts for the candidate or selection made.
The Supreme Court, sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), is using a 50% threshold in the ongoing recount of vice presidential votes.
Robredo's camp said a 25% threshold should be applied.
'This (usage of 50% threshold)is clearly contrary to the mandate of Rule 62 of the Revisor's Guide that the will of the voter should be given effect, setting aside technicalities and that the votes therein should be presumed to have been made by the voter and will be considered as such unless reasons exist that will justify their rejection, the lawyers said.
The camp of the Vice President also on Thursday claimed that no anomaly was seen during the manual recount of votes. Macalintal said the result of the manual recount tallied with that of the automated election results.
'There's nothing that would cause us to be alarmed, Macalintal told reporters.
The camp of former senator Ferdinand 'Bongbong Marcos on the first day of the recount on Monday said some ballots were wet and audit logs were missing.
So far, the PET had opened 33 ballot boxes from the municipality of Bato, Camarines Sur.
Macalintal said there were no indications that the ballots were tampered with before these were delivered to the Supreme Court.
'There is no indication that the ballots were tampered with or a massive fraud was committed before the delivery of the ballots (to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal), he pointed out. Robredo beat Marcos by 263,473 votes in the 2016 polls.
Macalintal said the presence of wet ballots in six ballot boxes and the absence of audit logs are no proof of poll fraud.
The PET, he explained, has the option to order the printing of scanned ballots, while the audit logs are not required to be placed in ballot boxes but are returned to election officers based on Commission on Elections (Comelec) Resolution 10057.
'We are not saying that we're winning because we already won (in the 2016 polls). The recount just confirms our victory and that there was no irregularity that happened. Marcos is inventing supposed irregularities by invoking these audit logs which are not required to be inside the ballot boxes in the first place, Macalintal stressed.
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