Comelec: Random manual audit to start May 15

MANILA, Philippines — The random manual audit (RMA) of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will start on May 15, two days after the midterm elections, a poll official said Friday.

Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia said there will be two steps — first, they will randomly choose the municipalities that will be included in the audit; second, they will randomly pick 715 precincts from the selected municipalities.

“Why two steps? It is basically logistics. We want to prepare our people, so they know where to get the ballots,” Guia, Commissioner-in-charge of the RMA, said in Filipino in a press briefing.

“Dapat malaman na namin the day before kung ano ‘yung munispyo (We need to know the municipalities selected the day before). Our people will be mobilized in getting, retrieving the sample precincts from the municipality. We will be publishing this information as well,” he added.

The RMA is a process the Comelec is undertaking to determine whether the automated count of the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) under an Automated Election System (AES) is accurate based on the manual verification of the said count.

The poll body vowed that the RMA would be transparent and would not delay the election process.

The Comelec has chosen Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) as RMA’s lead convenor following the pullout of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel).

Namfrel earlier declined its accreditation as citizens’ arm for the elections because Comelec denied its request to access key election data. (Editor: Eden Estopace)

READ: Lente to replace Namfrel as Comelec’s partner for random manual audit

READ: Namfrel withdraws as poll partner