SC asked to void proclamation of senatorial poll winners

Comelec office. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Four losing senatorial candidates on Monday asked the Supreme Court to nullify the proclamation of winning candidates in 2013 midterm elections, citing errors in the canvassing of results.

In a 25-page petition, Rizalito David, Baldomero Falcone, Ricardo Penson and  Hans Christian M. Señeres said the Commission on Elections committed grave abuse of discretion when it proclaimed winning senators in 2013 despite questions in the accuracy in the canvassed election results.

“Despite doubt on the accuracy of the count done by the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan) machines, the public respondent made the partial proclamations. The actuation of the public respondent is a capricious and whimsical exercise of judgment as is equivalent to excess, or a lack of jurisdiction is evidence of grave abuse of discretion,” petitioners said.

The petitioners also accused the Commission on Elections of abusing is mandate when it proclaimed the winning senators despite failure to comply with the Authentication of Electronically Transmitted Election Results.

Comelec also allegedly ignored the findings and recommendations of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) which observed vote padding and shaving in a number of precincts.

“It appears from the findings of the TEC that there was automated ‘dagdag-bawas’, resulting in the proclamation of ‘accidental’ senators, when it concluded that lines caused ‘additional votes for candidates even if there were not votes for the candidate’ and ‘loss of votes for candidates who received votes which were not counted because the line caused an overvote’,” it added.

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