Bongbong raises wet ballots, ‘missing’ audit logs

Former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. raised the issue of alleged wet ballots and "missing" clustered precinct audit logs in a town in Camarines Sur on Monday, the first day of the manual vote recount that is part of his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.

All ballots from four clustered precincts in the municipality of Bato in Camarines Sur have all been found wet, and their contents "illegible," he told reporters after observing the recount at the Supreme Court-Court of Appeals gymnasium in Manila.

"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," he said.

The son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. also alleged that 38 out of 42 clustered precincts in the same town had no audit logs. His lawyer, Vic Rodriguez, clarified later 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," Marcos said.

The audit logs, he said, record the time a voting precinct opens and closes and the time the vote-counting machines (VCM) are fed votes. These logs show if a VCM reported earlier or later than scheduled or if it was batch-fed votes.

"Kung lahat ng boto pumasok, halimbawa...500 boto ang pumasok within 30 minutes, nag-batch feeding 'yan...'yan lahat ay nasa audit log," Marcos said.

"We're going to have to find a way to recover those audit logs somehow. Since we are using computers, baka naman it's possible that those audit logs are in the database," he added.

These concerns will be manifested in their objections, which will be recorded by the head revisors in each revision committee.

Marcos said he found the ballot boxes apparently unsecured prior to their Monday reopening -- while the containers were sealed, one box had a hole patched by masking tape, and a crack on its side, he said.

He further observed rather slow proceedings on the first day of the recount, but expects the process to speed up later. He wants the 50 targeted revision committees -- there are currently only 40 -- to eventually be able to go through two ballot boxes a day.

The revision teams will have to chip away at ballot boxes from 5,418 clustered precincts from Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental, Marcos' three pilot provinces.

The proceedings are closed to the media.

Marcos lost to Robredo in the May 2016 election by a margin of 263,473 votes. He filed his election protest one day before Robredo formally took office. —KBK, GMA News