Congress tally as of 7:59 pm, June 7, 2010, 237 of 278 COCs counted

Presidential candidate	# of votes	Vice-presidential candidate	# of Votes
Aquino	15072053	Binay	14501371
Estrada	9471029	Roxas	13889416
Villar	5484747	Legarda	4212152
Teodoro	4065524	Fernando	1014846
Villanueva	1122896	Manzano	803738
Gordon	498414	Yasay	363912
Acosta	180839	Sonza	63914
Perlas	54256	Chipeco	52275
Madrigal	46041	Total number of votes for Vice President:	34901624
De los Reyes	44031
Total votes counted for President:	36039830

 

Binay, on the other hand, has a slim but sufficient lead of 611,995 votes over Liberal Party candidate Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas II.

Binay already has 14.5 million votes. Roxas has 13.89 million votes.  

 

Congress failed again to meet its self-imposed deadline to finish on Monday the canvassing of votes cast for President and Vice-President. 

 

But speaking to reporters, Senate majority leader Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri vowed that they would proclaim the winners at 2 p.m on Wednesday.

 

Lanao Del Sur delays canvassing

 

The lawmakers are just waiting for the results of Lanao Del Sur province.

 

According to Commission on Elections executive director Jose Tolentino, the province has total 515,000 registered voters but only about 356,000 voted.

 

Although the results of the Lanao del Sur will no longer affect the lead of Aquino and Binay, Senate majority leader Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri told reporters that "we do not want to disenfranchise anybody."

 

"We felt that we would not want to disenfranchise such a large province. Our agreement during the caucus was we will come back tomorrow at 1 p.m. just specifically to canvass the last province which is Lanao del Sur," said Zubiri.

 

"After tomorrow, we have accounted for all provinces and cities and absentee voters. We can proceed to the committee report," added Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.

 

The province is yet to transmit results of a single Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS). Tolentino explained that 28 precincts need to transmit results before they can accomplish a provincial Certificate of Canvass (COC). 

 

Upon the instruction of Congress to expedite the transmission, Comelec said it would provide its officials in Lanao Del Sur the password to lower the threshold in the province so they can already print a COC.

 

Tolentino said they would also summon the local BOC chairman to appear before Congress on Tuesday to present the printed COCs and Statement of Votes, two requirements before Congress could canvass the results.

 

Congress earlier promised to finish canvassing on June 3, but the same provinces caused the delays. Nevertheless, it's still a week away from its original deadline of June 15. 

 

The Office of the President and the Office of the Vice-President will be vacated on June 30.

 

Roxas camp disappointed

 

The lawyer of Roxas, Jose Tenefrancia, said he was disappointed that Congress did not pay attention to their concerns.

 

The Roxas camp claimed that some precincts showed statistical impossibilities that favored Binay.

 

"Senator Roxas has sought to ensure that the true will of the electorate will be upheld. We have consistently manifested and moved that an accurate and complete count of the votes be conducted," Tenafrancia spoke before Congress before it suspended session on Tuesday.

 

The Roxas camp sought an expanded random manual audit because of supposedly 3 million disenfranchised voters. This is about 4 times the lead of Binay over Roxas.

 

The Roxas camp cited 3 "funny trends" in the results of the May 10 polls: 1) erroneous transmission of field testing and sealing instead of the actual results, 2) lowering of the canvassing threshold which resulted in certain results not being canvassed, and 3) unaccounted null votes.

 

The Roxas camp believes that an expanded manual audit will show that most of the disenfranchised voters voted for Roxas. They claimed a high incidence of null votes in the bailiwicks of Roxas.

 

COCs nationwide show that there are a total 2.6 million null votes for the position of vice-president. 

 

A vote for VP could be declared null when 1) the voter did not vote for a candidate, 2) the voter voted for more than one candidate, and 3) the PCOS could not recognize the shading.

 

Enrile said the NBOC is not the proper venue for Tenefrancia's concerns, however.

 

Meanwhile, Binay lawyer Sandra Coronel said the issues raised by the Roxas camp are "inconsequential," stressing that the so-called "null votes" are merely "stray votes."