On the first day of the recounting of votes of the 2016 vice presidential election, former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. claimed the presence of irregularities that may be used to back his electoral protest.
The Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) began the recount yesterday, April 2, and discovered that there are missing audit logs and wet ballots.
“It was because somebody might have opened the poll boxes,” Marcos alleged.
He added that 38 of the 40 ballot boxes from the town of Bato in Camarines Sur lacked audit logs. Bato is one of the three provinces Marcos identified for the recount.
“At the outset of the recount, we already discovered these missing audit logs. They couldn’t tell where those audit logs went. This means somebody opened the ballot boxes and took the audit logs before closing them again,” Marcos said.
He also stressed the importance of these audit logs, saying, “It is a record of when the (vote-counting machine or VCM) is opened, when the ballot was inserted, when the votes were transmitted to the server and when the VCM was again closed.”
As to the wet ballot boxes, Marcos said, “If these ballots had been wet since the election two years ago, these should have dried up by now. But this means the ballots were dampened only when they were transferred here.”
However, Robredo’s lawyer, Romulo Macalintal downplayed the concerns of Marcos and said that “there is nothing to worry about” because missing audit logs and wet ballots will not alter the results of the recount.
(DAILY NEWS ROUND UP FOR 04/ 3 /18)