Congress Tally Election Result: Aquino, Binay lead in count

Picking up speed on Tuesday, the manual count by the joint congressional committee of the votes for president and vice president saw Sen. Benigno Aquino III retaking the lead from deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Congress, sitting as the national board of canvassers, had counted tallies from 189 of the 278 certificates of canvass (CoCs) as of 8:35 Tuesday night before adjourning.

Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay maintained his lead in the vice presidential race with his closest rival, Sen. Manuel Roxas II, behind by close to 300,000 votes.

Aquino had 9,564,943 votes (42.5 percent of the 22.51 million votes counted so far), some 3.5 million votes more than Estrada, who got 5,927,990 votes. Sen. Manuel Villar garnered 3,333,558 votes and Gilbert Teodoro, 2,480,185.

In fifth place was Eddie Villanueva with 722,857 votes, followed by Richard Gordon with 270,981. Vetallano Acosta got 118,351; Nicanor Perlas, 33,730; Sen. Jamby Madrigal, 30,533; and John Carlos de los Reyes, 28,297.

In the vice presidential race, Binay got 9,048,351 votes or 41.6 percent of the 21.75 million votes counted so far. Roxas received 8,749,968 votes. A far third was Sen. Loren Legarda with 2,570,103 votes, followed by Bayani Fernando with 582,162.

Edu Manzano had 497,296 votes, followed by Perfecto Yasay with 232,135, Jay Sonza with 37,919 and Dominador Chipeco with 35,942.

Among the CoCs canvassed were those from Aquino’s home province of Tarlac and the vote-rich provinces of Cebu, Bulacan, Cavite and Laguna.

Null votes

With the vice presidential race heating up in the national canvass, the camps of Roxas and Binay clashed on the impact of null votes at the local level on the national canvass.

The election lawyers of Roxas, joined by the lawyers of Madrigal and Villanueva, posed objections to what they said was the unusually large number of null votes.

Binay’s camp, however, claimed that the null votes were insignificant to matter in the final count.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Speaker Prospero Nograles merely noted the objections and proceeded with the canvassing of votes on the CoCs under protest.

Based on estimates by election lawyers, there would be 2.6 million null votes in the vice presidential race and 1 million votes in the presidential race, Nograles said.

Nograles said the null votes were either due to the ovals for either president or vice president being left blank or to “over votes” in which the voter shaded two or more ovals, causing the counting machine not to read the vote.

In a close contest, Roxas’ lawyers claimed that every vote could matter in the final tally.

Camarines Norte Rep. Liwayway Vinzons-Chato, a member of the joint canvassing committee and Roxas’ party mate in the Liberal Party, raised the issue of voided votes. She said the failure to count them could have an impact on the results.

She scored the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic, provider of the counting machines, for failing to make a summary of the number of areas and total number of votes covered in the incomplete CoCs.

The most vigorous complaints were made during the opening of the Cavite CoCs. Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino acknowledged that some of the CoCs being canvassed were incomplete.

No connection

Lawyer Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III of the Binay camp argued there was no connection between the bailiwicks of Roxas and the issue of the null votes.

Pimentel noted, for example, the votes from Compostela Valley province, where Binay won by a landslide, but the null votes were equivalent to only 10 percent of the entire votes cast.

Pimentel pointed out that Cavite had a total of 1 million votes and the null votes reached only 27,000. He was reacting to a claim by the Roxas camp that the null votes were unusually bigger in areas where Roxas was winning.

Heads of provincial BOCs

Congress Tuesday decided to direct the head of the provincial and city board of canvassers (BOC) in 12 areas to appear before it and explain their apparent failure to electronically transmit results.

The provinces and cities whose BOC heads will be summoned are Aurora, Biliran, Bukidnon, Cagayan de Oro, Camarines Norte, Davao Oriental, Ilocos Sur, Kalinga, Pampanga, Romblon, San Juan and Surigao del Sur.

Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said the national board of canvassers had yet to receive electronically transmitted results from Lanao del Sur, which will hold special elections in seven towns on June 3. The balloting failed to push through in the towns on May 10 because of security concerns and some administrative hitches.

In Camarines Norte, all members of the provincial board of canvassers would be summoned upon the request of Camarines Norte Rep. Liwayway Chato.

The national board of canvassers, at the start of its session, raised the issue about the lack of electronically transmitted results when it discussed the certificates of canvass (CoCs) from Ilocos Sur.

There were no electronically transmitted results from Ilocos Sur on the server of Congress, but a CD containing the results was submitted to Congress. The canvassing of the Ilocos Sur CoCs was deferred Tuesday.

Tolentino said the server of Congress did not receive electronically transmitted results from Ilocos Sur even though the PBOC said it had sent these. This was why the PBOC had recorded the results in a CD.

Tolentino explained before lawmakers that a BOC, using its canvassing and consolidation system (CCS), transmits the results to the CCS in Congress and to the Comelec’s server in the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

Sometimes, the results, for whatever reason, would only be received by one server, he said.

Under the Comelec’s contingency plans, if the servers failed to receive any electronically transmitted results, the BOC was supposed to record the results in the CD and submit these for uploading.

“We already saw it could happen. That’s why in our general instructions we provide a contingency measure which is to upload the CDs. The CDs are still encrypted,” he said.

Tolentino added that the contents of the CDs were one and the same as the contents of the manually transmitted election results since they came from the same source.

Earlier in the session, Congress did away with any more arguments on the lack of the board of election inspectors’ personal digital signatures on the election results.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said any objections raised on the ground of digital signatures “should be denied.”

One reason Enrile cited was that the manner of authentication of documents as provided for in the Supreme Court’s rules on electronic evidence had been complied with.

Another reason is that the CoCs that the board is canvassing are considered authentic and duly executed under the automated election law and Congress’ own rules on canvassing.