黑料社

MANILA, Philippines 鈥� The random manual audit (RMA) of votes cast for the May 9 polls has so far yielded a nearly 100-percent accuracy rate, an election watchdog said.

鈥淭he last preliminary accuracy result that we released is around 99.96 [percent]. Preliminary pa lang po 鈥榶an [That鈥檚 only preliminary] but we will release a final report for the record,鈥� Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) representative Atty. Helen Gaido told reporters.

This, as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday began the reverse deployment of ballot boxes used in the RMA to their respective points of origin.

Lente is among the Comelec鈥檚 election watchdog partners in this year鈥檚 RMA.

The RMA is a process the Comelec undertakes during elections to determine whether the automated count of the vote counting machines (VCMs) under an Automated Election System is accurate based on the manual verification of the said count.

There are 757 clustered precincts randomly selected for the RMA for this year鈥檚 polls.

Votes from 746 clustered precincts have so far been audited, Gaido noted.

鈥楪ood pace鈥�

This year鈥檚 RMA was conducted at a 鈥済ood pace,鈥� Gaido also said.

鈥淲e can鈥檛 really say it鈥檚 faster. It went on a good pace naman given the all the positions that we had to audit and the number of ballot boxes na kailangan nating i-audit, especially considering na kasama diyan ang senators and party-lists [that we need to audit, especially considering the need to also include the senatorial and party-list posts],鈥� she said.

鈥淎nd if you get to learn how the RMA process goes, talagang komplikado yung pagta-tally ng [it鈥檚 really complicated to tally votes for] senators and party-list,鈥� she added.

According to Gaido, the RMA acts as a 鈥渄iagnostic check鈥� of the VCMs.

鈥淭he purpose of RMA is really to check the accuracy of the machine. So what we鈥檙e looking [for] is the performance of the machine, how it reads鈥� [the performance [of the] equipment,鈥� she said.

鈥淣apakaimportante dahil yung makina po siya po yung nagka-capture kung ano yung will ng voters natin. Kaya nandito po yung RMA, para masabi natin na naka-capture yung dapat,鈥� she further said.

(It is very important because the machine is what captures the will of our voters. That鈥檚 why there is an RMA, so we can see if what needs to be captured is captured.)

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Comelec: Random manual audit of votes matches 99.9% of ERs

EDV/abc