SC asked to stop Comelec’s manual audit By Benjamin B. Pulta 05/25/2010

SC asked to stop Comelec’s manual audit

By Benjamin B. Pulta 05/25/2010 Citing unexplained delays in compliance with the election law’s requirements, the Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP), the political party of losing presidential candidate John Carlos “JC” de los Reyes, is asking the Supreme Court (SC) to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the random manual audit of some precincts by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). According to the party, the delay in conducting the Random Manual Audit (RMA) of clustered polling precincts selected last May 10 has compromised the integrity of these pre-selected clustered precincts and should be stopped and replaced with other sample precincts. In a nine-page petition, AKP claimed that the electoral body failed to strictly implement Comelec Resolution 8837, which requires that the RMA of selected clustered polling precincts be conducted on May 10, immediately after the shut down of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. Out of the more than 76,000 polling precincts, the Comelec has chosen some 1,000 precincts wherein the random manual audit would have been conducted after the voting period ended at 7 p.m. of May 10, 2010. Republic Act 9369 or the Poll Automation Law requires the Comelec to conduct an RMA in one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the poll body in each province and city.  The law states that any difference between the automated and manual count will result in the determination of root cause and initiate a manual count for those precincts affected by the computer or procedural error.... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20100525hed5.html

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