{"id":152685,"date":"2018-02-13T21:36:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T02:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=152685"},"modified":"2018-02-13T21:36:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T02:36:59","slug":"marcos-given-wrong-info-on-square-on-ballots-macalintal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/02\/13\/marcos-given-wrong-info-on-square-on-ballots-macalintal\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcos given wrong info on \u2018square\u2019 on ballots: Macalintal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lawyer<\/a>
Lawyer Romulo Macalintal, Robredo’s counsel, explained that the \u2018square\u2019 containing the black shading was a new and special feature of the ballot images for the 2016 polls. (Facebook photos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u2014<\/strong>\u00a0The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo said former Senator Bongbong Marcos was fed with wrong information on the \u2018square\u2019 opposite the names of the candidates on the ballots, which the latter claims as \u201cshocking and highly questionable\u2019 and proof of massive cheating to favor the former.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Romulo Macalintal, Robredo’s counsel, explained that the \u2018square\u2019 containing the black shading was a new and special feature of the ballot images for the 2016 polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarcos was clearly fed with the wrong information by his adviser or a person who was as hysterical and excited as Marcos when they saw this characteristics of the ballot images,\u201d Macalintal said in a press conference in Manila on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did not know that this \u2018square\u2019 containing the black shading made by the voter on the ballot was a new and special feature of the ballot images for the 2016 elections,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Macalintal noted that \u201cin the 2016 elections the Comelec set a 25-percent threshold or the extent of the shading a voter had to make on the ballot in order that such vote could be counted by the vote counting machines. If the shading is less than 25 percent, the machine will not count the vote which means that the shading must be 25 percent or more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd once the shading on the ballot met said threshold, the same is counted by the machine and the ballot image when printed will show that the shade is inside the \u2018square\u2019 which means that such shading was the recognized and counted by the machines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Macalintal made a presentation on the different types of ballots wherein Marcos\u2019 votes and even the votes of President Duterte and then presidential candidates Grace Poe, the late Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago and other candidates had also their counted votes inside the \u2018square; and ballot images showing the voter shaded more than one name and the vote was not counted for any candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clearly ridiculous and frivolous for Marcos to say that Robredo\u2019s votes inside the \u2018square\u2019 is a sign of irregularity and that only his votes that are also inside a similar \u2018square\u2019 are immaculately clean votes\u201d, Macalintal said.<\/p>\n

With this, the lawyer reiterated its previous \u201cplea to defeated vice presidential candidate not to use the name of Robredo and his dying or election protest to gain media and political mileage for his plan to run for Senator in the 2019 national and local electons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy way of self-defense, we call upon Marcos to concentrate on the forthcoming recount of ballots from the three (3) pilot province where he claimed he would overcome the 250,000 vote-lead of Robredo, instead of immediately informing the press that he is in possession of \u2018shocking evidence\u2019 of election fraud only to find out later that he was fed with the wrong information\u201d, Macalintal said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarcos is clearly demonstrating what the Supreme Court said in a case \u2018the propensity of election losers to demand a recount of ballots or filing all sorts of petitions in an open display of unwillingness to accept defeat,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Unacceptable explanation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The camp of Marcos, meanwhile, slammed Macalintal’s explanation regarding the presence of \u2018square\u2019 on the ballots.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Vic Rodriguez, Marcos’ spokesperson, said that the public had the right to know what there are squares instead of circles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchooled in the art of deception, this is nothing but another vain attempt of Mrs. Robredo to explain the presence of boxes on the ballot images instead of the circles. The people deserve nothing but a credible and authentic reason why the squares, instead of the original circles, are there,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez is wondering why there was a sudden change of heart from the other party regarding the presence of squares, which Marcos earlier questioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me remind him that when Senator Marcos first came out and presented the squares in the ballot images, he discredited it and claimed that those were fraudulent, tampered and manipulated pieces of evidence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow Atty. Macalintal appears to be lawyering for the Comelec by claiming that the squares are a new feature and that the parties were informed of the presence of the squares in the ballot images,\u201d Marcos\u2019 spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

With this, he challenged Macalintal to produce a statement that will substantiate his claim on the poll body\u2019s explanation regarding the squares on the ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dare him now to produce any briefing made by the Comelec on the presence of the squares because I have yet to meet anyone \u2013 be it a political party or candidate or Information Technology expert – who had ever been informed of the existence of squares on the ballot images,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither Atty. Macalintal is just being consistently untrue or he had a special briefing from Comelec exclusively for the then ruling Liberal Party. Either way, the existence of the square is an unlawful insertion and alteration of the digital image. If they did the insertion clandestinely, we wonder what other alterations they did to alter the digital results?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez noted that there were no boxes shown during the review of the source code of the assailed ballots.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe squares should not be there because during the source code review, no boxes were shown. If ever, the boxes must have been added after the source code review which is against the law,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u2014\u00a0The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo said former Senator Bongbong Marcos was fed with wrong information on the \u2018square\u2019 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":79390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,95],"tags":[41345,29271,46538,15460],"class_list":["post-152685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-ph","tag-former-senator-bongbong-marcos","tag-lawyer-romulo-macalintal","tag-marcos-was-fed-with-wrong-information","tag-vice-president-leni-robredo","mauthors-ferdinand-patinio","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}