Marcos questions wet ballots and missing audit logs at the start of recount

Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday, April 2, immediately questioned wet ballots and missing voting precinct audit logs in a town in Camarines Sur, one of the three pilot provinces he identified for the ballot recount. (Photo: Bongbong Marcos/Facebook)

Just as the Supreme Court (SC) marked the first day of the manual recount of votes in the 2016 vice presidential race, former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday, April 2, immediately questioned wet ballots and missing voting precinct audit logs in a town in Camarines Sur, one of the three pilot provinces he identified for the ballot recount.

In an interview with reporters, Marcos disclosed that all ballots from four voting precincts in Bato, Camarines Sur appeared to have been recently wet, making its contents “illegible.”

“Sa ngayon pa lang, mayroon na kaming nakita, apat na presinto sa bayan ng Bato, nung binuksan lahat ng balota basa (So far, we have discovered that from four precincts in the municipality of Bato, all ballots were wet when opened),” Marcos revealed.

“Hindi namin maintindihan papaano, imposible naman siguro na dalawang taong basa ‘yan. Palagay ko, kailangan talaga pag-aralan kung paano nangyari ‘yan. Ibig sabihin kasi kung may nagbasa, may nagbukas nung ballot box (We don’t understand how, it is impossible that those have been wet in two years. I think, we need to study how it happened. It means that if someone made those ballots wet, someone opened the ballot box as well),” he added.

Aside from the wet ballots, Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., also claimed that 38 out of 42 clustered precincts in the same municipality have missing audit logs. But his lawyer, Vic Rodriguez, clarified that Marcos meant 39 over 40 precincts.

“Bakit walang audit log? Ibig sabihin binuksan ‘yung ballot boxes, kinuha ‘yung audit log. At hindi namin makita (Why was there no audit log? It means the ballot boxes were opened and someone took the audit log. And we cannot find it),” the former senator said.

Marcos explained that the audit logs record the time a voting precinct opened and closed and the time the votes were cast in the vote-counting machines (VCM).

Despite this, he said, “We’re going to have to find a way to recover those audit logs somehow. Since we are using computers, baka naman (Perhaps) it’s possible that those audit logs are in the database of some other computers.”

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo, on the other hand, dismissed Marcos’ allegation, calling it “fake news.”

“Nagtataka lamang ako bakit biglang sasabihin ni Mr. Marcos na may anomalya o anuman, ano? Walang anomaly — ‘yung sinasabi ni Mr. Marcos na parang anomaly, fake news ‘yun. Hindi totoo ‘yun. ‘Wag ‘nyo pong ilalagay kasi fake news (I’m just wondering why Mr. Marcos claimed that there was anomaly. There was no anomaly – What Mr. Marcos was saying is fake news. It is not true. Don’t report it because it is fake news),” Veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said.

Macalintal pointed out that ballots from Bato got wet after a typhoon hit the town last December, but this should not be a concern as these could easily be remedied through ballot images which will show the same result.

“Nothing to be alarmed, nothing to worry about. Wala hong dapat ipangamba dahil ‘yun ho ay may kanya-kanyang litrato (There is nothing to be worried about as those have its own pictures),” he explained.

The lawyer added that the audit logs which disappeared are “only technical defects” that will not affect the vote count’s accuracy.

“That’s not a determining factor na nagkaroon ng (that there were) anomalies. If ever, these are only technical defects or technicalities which will never affect the genuiness and accuracy of the count,” Macalintal explained.

“Ang pinag-uusapan diyan, tama ba ang bilang, hindi tama ba ang audit logs (What we are talking here is the accuracy of the count, not the audit logs),” he continued.

The vote recount for the electoral protest that Marcos lodged against Robredo began yesterday at the SC-Court of Appeals (CA) Gymnasium in Padre Faura, Manila.

It will run from Monday to Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break and two 15-minute breaks.