Comelec, poll watchdogs start random manual audit of votes in Eleksyon 2022

The Commission on Elections (Comelec), election watchdogs, and partner organizations have started conducting random manual audit (RMA) of votes for this year’s elections.

At the press briefing on Thursday, RMA chairperson and Atty. Helen Graido said the RMA was conducted to check the performance of vote counting machines (VCMs) and to examine the ballots to validate accuracy.

“Ang random manual audit, a check up on the performance of the machine yan yung VCMs. Yung election three days ago marami pong nagmalfunction na VCMs pero ang tinitignan din po sa RMA ay yung pagbasa po ng mga boto or mga markings na nilagay sa balota,” Graido said at the press briefing.

(The random manual audit, a check up on the performance of the machine, which are the VCMs. During the elections last three days ago, many VCMs malfunctioned. We are checking in the RMA the markings written in the ballots.)

Graido said the checking of the ballots had a set of instructions which were guidelines in reading the markings of the ballots.

“’Yun po mga instructions na nilagay sa makina sa VCMs, yan magiging gabay ng makina kung paano niya po babasahin yung mga markings na inilagay sa balota. Yung same set of instruction itrain po natin yung ating random manual audit teams to follow same set at iread manually yung mga balota,” she said.

(The instructions were placed in the VCMs, this will be the guideline of the machines on how to read the markings written in the ballots. These were the same set of instructions that were used in training our random manual audit teams to follow the same set and read the ballots manually.)

“Random, ibig sabihin walang human intervention, walang preference, walang bias sa pagpili ng cluster precincts na subject to audit,” she added.

(Random meaning no human intervention, no preference, no bias in choosing cluster precincts for the subject to audit.)

The RMA chairperson said they partnered with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and  Coalition of Civil Society Organizations (LENTE, PICPA, PSPHP, NAMFREL, and ISACA) to create and check the random selection software.

As of Thursday, May 12, they already retrieved 202 ballot boxes from different legislative districts.

“We are still expecting more to come according to the list. We generated 757 samples of clustered precincts. 202 out of 757 samples, and yun target naman po para makumpleto yung ballot boxes na ito,” she added.

It will be manually counted for the next 45 days to validate if the figures are reflected in the election returns.

The RMA was held at the Diamond Hotel in Pasay City.

The manual audit is being live streamed through the Comelec’s Facebook page.—NB, GMA News