MANILA, Philippines ? Insisting that the "null votes" in the vice-presidential race should be counted, Liberal Party officials questioned what they described as "alarming" trends and incidents in certain provinces that suggest electoral fraud.

In a press conference, LP campaign manager Butch Abad and Information and Technology security expert Anton Bonifacio presented their analysis of the vote showing a very high turnout ? up to 98 percent ? in places in Central Mindanao where Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay led over Senator Manuel ?Mar? Roxas II.

On the other hand, in areas where Roxas led ? Eastern and Central Visayas ? there were a large number of "null votes," even bigger than vote-rich areas like Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog.

"If you recall during the ?Hello Garci? scandal, there were many observations made by FPJ [the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.] that there were many precincts where there was a large turnout of voters," Abad said.

"He said this might be a possible indication that vote-padding might have happened to enhance the performance of other candidates," he added.

Abad added that there were even clustered precincts where Roxas did not get a single vote.

"We're only raising questions like, number one, statistical impossibility that all would vote for one person and these are precincts that are clustered so the degree of impossibility even becomes greater," he added.