Leni losing votes due to ‘wrong’ standard in manual recount —petition

The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo has blamed the "systematic decrease" in votes for her during the 2016 elections to the supposed wrong standard used to determine which votes are valid in the manual vote recount. 

On Thursday, after a failed first attempt, she once against asked the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to direct its Head Revisors — employees that lead the vice presidential vote recount — to apply the 25-percent threshold instead of the 50 percent to classify which votes will be counted.

The continued application of the 50-percent threshold, her second petition read, "gives the wrong impression and greatly prejudices not only protestee Robredo but legitimate voters who are now being disenfranchised."

To illustrate their point, Robredo's lawyers raised an "inconsistency" between the election results in 2016 and the physical vote count that started on April 2.

For example, they cited the Camarines Sur municipality of Balatan, particularly in Barangay Laganac, Clustered Precinct No. 16. Based on election returns, they said Robredo earned 358 votes in this precinct while her rival, former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, who is questioning her victory, got 17.

However, when the 50-percent threshold was applied in the manual recount, the results changed — Robredo lost 12 votes while Marcos lost none.

While Robredo's camp can claim these ballots in her favor, she said "discretion is now given during the appreciation of ballots on whether these valid votes should be given back to her."

"At the risk of belaboring the point, the physical count is now running inconsistent with the results based on the Election Returns, Statement of Votes by Precinct, Ballot Images and Voter's Verifiable Audit Paper Trail (VVPAT)," her motion read.

"This misleads the Honorable Tribunal into believing that the VCM (Vote-Counting Machine) failed to accurately read and count the ballots. Thus, leading into a mistaken notion that protestant Marcos successfully proved substantial recovery in this Election Protest."

Sought for comment, Marcos spokesperson Vic Rodriguez accused Robredo of cheating by changing the recount rules.

"Leni Robredo cheated her way to the vice presidency and in this ongoing manual recount and judicial revision, she is attempting to cheat the Filipino people again by trying to change the rules in the middle of the game," he said in a message to reporters.

"Robredo should stop accusing the PET of systematically reducing her votes and casting aspersions meant to debase its integrity," he added. —KBK, GMA News