Audit of COCs from 6 places set
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Saturday created a subcommittee to audit six selected certificates of canvass (COCs) in the senatorial and party-list races to ensure that all votes were properly accounted for.
“We will be creating a subcommittee to compare the hard printed copies as delivered by the provincial election supervisor or the election officer and compare it with the generated certificates of canvass as well as statement of votes for the municipality to determine if any municipality has been omitted from the certificate of canvass,” said Comelec Commissioner Christian Lim during the session of the National Board of Canvassers.
The six COCs involve those with marked discrepancies on the precinct-level data from the transparency server. These were from Benguet, Ilocos Sur, Zamboanga del Sur, Misamis Oriental, Nueva Ecija and Iloilo.
The audit will be conducted starting today before representatives of the senatorial candidates and party-list groups at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City, the venue of the ongoing canvassing.
Lim said the parties would be given the opportunity to review the printed COCs as against the hard copies of the COCs, and the statement of votes per municipality.
Meanwhile, the Comelec explained that some of the discrepancies earlier noted in the tallies between the transparency server and the poll body’s central server were due to the sample votes that were inadvertently transmitted to the system.
Lim explained that there were pre-logic and accuracy tests (PRELAT) conducted on the vote counting machines (VCMs) before the election. The actual names of the candidates were used for the test run.
It was only during the mock elections that the names of candidates were not used, he said.
