REVISORS of the Supreme Court, acting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal, have finished the recount of votes in 16 towns in Camarines Sur, in connection with the election protest filed by former Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo.
These areas constituted only one-sixth of the total precincts in the three pilot provinces so far after one month of the manual recount, a PET insider who requested anonymity revealed.
The source said the PET has finished the recount for 16 towns of Camarines SurBaao, Balatan, Bato, Buhi, Bula, Camaligan, Canaman, Ocampo, Gainza, Garchitorena, Lagonoy, Magarao, Pili, Presentacion, Sangay and San Fernando.
Revisors started opening the ballot boxes from Minalabac town last Monday and still have to start the recount for 17 more towns and two cities in the home province of Robredo.
At the pace the revision of votes is going, the source said the manual recount may take six months to finish.
“It will most probably take another month or even more to finish CamSur, so that’s two months per pilot province. Based on this pace, our revisors will most likely complete the recount on three provinces after six months or by October maybe,” the insider said.
Aside from Camarines Sur, the two other pilot provinces identified by the Marcos camp in his protest against Robredo were Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
The source said the PET has already formed an exploratory team to retrieve the ballot boxes from the two other provinces.
The ongoing recount in the pilot provinces—which involves verifying the physical count of ballots, recount of votes of parties, recording of objections and claims, and marking of contested ballots—started April 2 and covers a total of 5,418 clustered precincts.
It will form the basis for the PET’s decision whether there is substantial recovery of votes to proceed with other provinces contested by Marcos.
In his protest, Marcos contested the results in a total of 132,446 precincts in 39,221 clustered precincts covering 27 provinces and cities.
Both camps have been seeking speedy disposition of the PET case, but the manual recount has encountered several delays.
It was supposed to start Feb. 8, but was postponed twice—to March 19 and then to April 2—until the PET was able to meet the required number of revisors.
The revision itself has encountered several delays. Just on the second day, four of the 40 head revisors resigned for undisclosed reasons.
There were also delays after both camps clashed over excess ballots that had shaded votes for Robredo and when all air conditioning units in the venue broke down, both resulting in suspension for hours of the recount.
The first month of the PET revision of votes has raised several questions.
Revisors have been finding wet ballot boxes, unused or excess ballots with shaded votes for Robredo, missing audit logs and missing voters’ receipts in Camarines Sur towns.
They also discovered ballots with what appeared to be cigarette burns on their edges and holes in the middle portion.
The same ballot box did not have accompanying election records like election returns, voter’s receipts and minutes of voting.
Last week, revisors found ballots that appeared to have been soaked in liquid chemical as well as jumbled election documents.
Earlier, the PET denied the plea of Robredo for the 25-percent threshold to be applied in the ongoing manual recount and instead set the threshold at 50 percent, which cost her over 5,000 votes from her home province so far in the recount.
The Vice President appealed the ruling and the PET has sought comments from Marcos and the Commission on Elections.
Marcos filed the protest on June 29, 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in the May 2016 national polls.
Robredo won the vice presidential race in the May 2016 polls with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos’ 14,155,344 votes.