SC reverses Comelec’s ruling canceling candidate’s COC

The Supreme Court on Friday announced that it has reversed the ruling of the Commission on Elections canceling the certificate of candidacy of a candidate in the 2025 Sangguniang Panlungsod race in Tabuk City.

In a statement, the High Court said the poll body canceled Errol Comafay Jr.’s COC for misrepresenting his residential address.

Comafay initially wrote his address without a comma in his COC and later added commas separating locations in another part of the document.

Due to this, the Comelec Second Division granted a petition to cancel his COC, ruling that Comafay deliberately misled both the Comelec and the voters by providing a false address. This was affirmed by the Comelec En Banc.

For its part, the SC said that the omission of a comma does not amount to material misrepresentation. It held that the missing comma did not affect Comafay’s qualifications.

“The omission was harmless because it did not change the meaning of the address or relate to his qualifications,” the SC said in the statement.

Aside from this, it said that there was no bad faith on the part of Comafay.

The SC said that Comelec resorted to an “overly literal and narrow interpretation” of what amounts to a material misrepresentation. —AOL, GMA Integrated News