Brillantes defends use of grouped canvass reports

Commission on Elections Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. brushed aside criticisms that the proclamations of winning senatorial candidates last week were premature, saying the poll body acted validly in using grouped canvass reports to project the victorious candidates.

“Grouped canvass reports are official documents,” Brillantes said, recalling Comelec Resolution No. 9706, which validated the use of grouped canvass reports as bases for determining the votes obtained by each senatorial candidate.

“We rely not on the exact number of votes but on the projected number of votes [that] we anticipate,” he added, reacting to Inquirer columnist and former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban’s opinion piece on Sunday that the proclamations were invalid because they were based on the grouped canvass reports and not on the official certificates of canvass (COCs).

Panganiban “does not really understand what’s happening,” Brillantes said.

Grouped canvass reports are a consolidated tally of votes per position from the provincial, city and municipal boards of canvassers that have not yet transmitted their COCs electronically to the Comelec. The election law required COCs to contain results from 100 percent of all precincts, but several boards failed to submit their COCs on time because of glitches that hit the precinct count optical scan machines.

The grouped canvass reports were used by the Comelec, acting as the national board of canvassers, to come up with “projections” about who would make it to the top. Thus, the Comelec proclaimed Grace Poe, Loren Legarda, Chiz Escudero, Alan Peter Cayetano, Nancy Binay and Sonny Angara winners on Thursday even though only 72 out of  304 COCs, covering over 13 million votes, had been canvassed.

Bam Aquino, Koko Pimentel and Antonio Trillanes IV were proclaimed winners the following day based on 113 COCs representing about 34 million votes.

On Saturday, Cynthia Villar, JV Ejercito and Gregorio Honasan were proclaimed winners, with only 129 COCs representing about 40 million votes.

There are about 52 million registered voters.

In his column, Panganiban said the proclamations last week marked the first time election winners were declared not using COCs. He said Resolution No. 9706 should have been published first by the Comelec before becoming effective after seven days.

“If you want to be very technical about it, that’s correct. But these are not substantial changes. These are technicalities, procedural. We need not publish those already,” Brillantes said.