Brillantes rules out parallel manual count on May 13 polls

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines – A parallel manual count as suggested by a Catholic bishop to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) would render the automated count “useless,” Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. said Wednesday.

In a press briefing, Brillantes said if there would be a parallel manual count, the “automated count would actually be a useless count and if there are discrepancies there will be issues that will be raised.”

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said in a Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) News report that they are calling for a parallel manual count of all precints “to restore the credibility of our electoral procedure with all the above limitations and shortcomings.”

“Let not the Comelec say that there is no time for this, or that logistics have not been prepared…The stakes are too great for Comelec not to do all in its power to prove the reliability and trustworthiness of the present automated system,” he added.

Brillantes however said that conducting a parallel manual count was already like going back to the manual process before the 2010 automated elections.

In a parallel manual count, the ballots will first be fed to the Precint Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine for the automated count and then counted again manually to confirm the results of the automated count.

“It is no longer possible to do this, in the first place it is not provided for under the law. We already have what is called random manual audit which means there will be some random precints that will be manually counted immediately after the elections,” Brillantes said.

“To conduct a parallel manual count would involve some additional paraphernalia, like copies of election returns, which we are not prepared to print at this time,” he said.

The manual count will also slow down the elections since it takes time to count each ballot by hand.

“That would slow down the entire process including the consolidated canvassing [because] we have to wait for the manual count before the PCOS can transmit results,” Brillantes said.

“There are so many other complications [with the parallel manual count] as suggested by Bishop Pabillo,” he said.