Comelec on Roxas's call for manual audit: What for?

The call of Sen. Mar Roxas' camp for an expanded random manual audit of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines to make sure all votes for vice president -- including those considered null -- are counted, may be all for naught, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) believes.

Roxas' camp on Tuesday called for the audit after it noted some 2.6 million "null votes" in the certificates of canvass (COCs) for president and vice president.

Null votes are votes not counted by the PCOS machine due to insufficient and improper shading of ovals on the ballot, under-voting, and over-voting for a particular position.

Roxas is in a tight race for the vice presidency with Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, who is leading in the partial canvassed results.

"What for?" said Comelec Chairman Jose Melo, referring to calls for another manual audit.

Melo said it would be useless to recount the null votes manually since they weren't counted by the machines in the first place. This happens, for instance, when a voter did not vote for a candidate in any position or when he or she under-votes.

"What vote will you count if the voter did not even vote for any candidate?" he said in Filipino.

In the case of over-voting, for example, if a voter votes for more than the prescribed number of candidates, Melo said there's no way to determine who a person actually voted for even if the ballot is manually appreciated.

"You cannot second-guess the voter," he said.

If an oval wasn't shaded properly, or if less than 5 percent of it was shaded, the vote for a particular candidate simply won't be read by the machine and would thus be rendered invalid, said Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal.

However, poorly shaded ovals would rarely be accepted by the machine in the first place. Because PCOS machines have a 50-percent reading threshold, ovals shaded between 5 to 49 percent would cause the machine to reject the ballot.

"That's an ambiguous mark," Larrazabal said. "That ballot will be returned to you to be shaded completely."

Larrazabal, who heads the poll body's automation steering committee, explained that even the manual election system had the concept of "stray" or invalid votes. Back then, however, there was no way to check invalid votes except when a recount is conducted.

Recounts may still be conducted this time if candidates file an electoral protest, Larrazabal said, but with a new set of rules now that the system is automated.