THE Commission on Elections will create a subcommittee to audit the official count of votes cast in the May 9 elections to dispel doubts of cheating, Comelec Commissioner Arthur Lim said Saturday.
Lim said the commission decided to create a subcommittees to compare the hard printed copies as delivered by the provincial election supervisors and the generated certificates of canvass as well as the statement of votes per municipality.
“This is to determine if any municipality has been omitted from the certificate of canvass,” Lim said, adding that the subcommittee will start auditing everything today, Sunday.
“The parties will be given the opportunity to review the printed COCs as against the hard copies of the COCs, and the statement of votes per municipalities,” Lim said.
Aside from the subcommittee, the Comelec will do a manual tabulation for the purpose of generating the certificate of canvass for the positions of senator and party-list congressman.
“What we will do is similar to a statement of votes per province,” he said, adding the first statement will contain all the votes, whether automated or manual.
The second statement, he said, will contain all the votes broken down per province or highly urbanized city, or local absentee voting, or detainee voting.
The subcommittee will also prepare a third statement consolidating the two votes from both statements.
“And that will be the basis of the certificate of canvass, and as well as the basis for the certificate of proclamation,” Lim said.
Lim assured that this auditing process will only take two days.
The Comelec announced on Friday it is looking to proclaim the winners of 12 senators either on Tuesday or Thursday.