MANILA - The Commission on Elections, Namfrel and Philippine Statistics Authority are confident that vote counting machines counted votes correctly during the recent May 9 polls.
This is after the random manual audit of 678 of a total 715 selected clustered precincts all over the country yielded a 99.88 percent accuracy rate.
"Kung ang question is whether from this accuracy rate masasabi natin na credible yung machine, I can say it is almost perfect," Florante Varona of the Philippine Statistics Authority said.
"As far as validation and verification is concerned, the resulting accuracy rate is reliable."
The audit process involved manually counting the votes from each ballot and comparing it with the machine count to check whether it is accurate. Only the votes for President, Vice President, Congressman, Governor and Mayor were included in the count.
RMA chair Commissioner Luie Guia meanwhile reported that 14 ballot boxes were discovered to have missing ballots during the verification process of the Random Manual Audit. Because of this, the ballots may not be included in the process already.
Guia said they are investigating where the missing ballots went, noting the ballots could have been misplaced and placed in the wrong boxes during the conduct of the first level of audit.
"These precincts have already undergone Random Manual Audit at the first level, sa baba. At sa report naman, nabilang ang mga balota. So probably, misplaced yan during the conduct of the RMA but we are making the inquiry anyway," he said.
"Kasi kung ganun ang kwan sa baba, that could have been noticed already," he added.
The commissioner warned that anyone found to have taken ballots outside the precinct may be filed with an election offense.
The RMA group assured the public that the missing ballots do not affect the credibility of election, as the poll results have already been transmitted and canvassed even before the Random Manual Audit started.
"I don't think it would affect the results of the RMA, because we have enough samplings already," Atty. Temie Lambino, Comelec-NCR Regional Director said.
"Now with the integrity of the result of the elections, I don't think it would affect also, because the results were transmitted already before these missing ballots were found out by the RMA team. And we have ER's to prove that the same results were transmitted."
The RMA team is set to finish the audit for the remaining 28 clustered precincts in a few days. The final report will be released in two weeks.
vote counting machines, comelec, commission on elections, namfrel, philippine statistics office