The Supreme Court, acting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, has set aside the 50-percent threshold being used in determining the validity of the votes in the election protest filed by former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against Vice President Leni Robredo.
The PET made its decision even as Marcos’ lawyer on Wednesday described as a “non-issue” the 25-percent ballot shading threshold to be used in the recount of the votes between Marcos and Vice President Leni Robredo.
Vic Rodriguez told ANC that the PET was just stating, “as a matter of fact, that apparently the Commission on Elections decreased the threshold from 50 percent to 25 percent.”
“‹Marcos is contesting Robredo’s victory in the 2016 vice presidential election, claiming her camp had cheated.
The PET, through Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, partially granted the motion filed by Robredo asking it to abandon its earlier ruling in favor of the 50 percent shading threshold over the 25 percent threshold that was used by the Commission on Elections during the 2016 election.
“After assiduously going through the parties’ comments and arguments, the Court herein resolves to partially grant the subject motion insofar as setting aside the use of 50 percent threshold in the revision proceedings is concerned,” the PET ruled.
The PET also decided to set aside the use of the numerical threshold in segregating votes and instead ordered the revisors to refer to election returns generated by the vote-counting machines in the 2016 elections.
The ER is a document in electronic and printed form directly produced by the VCM showing the date of the election, the province, municipality and the precinct in which it was held, and the votes in figures for each candidate in a clustered precinct where the VCM was used.
Under the new guidelines, the segregation and classification of ballots will be done by referring to the ERs generated by the machines in the elections.
“In this way, the reading of the VCM is mimicked and verified/confirmed. Also, in using the ERs generated by the VCMs used in the 2016 elections and not merely adopting a specific threshold, the Tribunal’s revision procedure will be more flexible and adaptive to calibrations of the voting or counting machines in the future,” the PET said.
Any issue on the segregation and classification of the ballots by the ER will be resolved by the assigned revision supervisor based on the guidelines set by the Tribunal.
After the revision process, the PET said, all objections and claims by both parties will be resolved by the tribunal during the appreciation stage, taking into consideration the intent of the voters.
“The Tribunal understand that there are instances where the ERs are not included in the documents inside the ballot boxes. Thus, in the absence of the ERs inside the ballot boxes, the HRs shall use the certified true copies of the Ers, which the Tribunal is already in the process of obtaining from the Comelec,” the PET said.
Nonetheless, the high court defended its earlier decision for a 50-percent threshold in determining the validity of votes.
According to the tribunal, it never received any documents from the Commission on Elections to back Robredo’s claim that the poll body adopted the 25 percent threshold through Comelec en banc Resolution 16-0600 prior to the commencement of the revision proceedings that started on April 2, 2018.
In fact, the PET noted, the Comelec merely submitted the Random Manual Audit Guide where it uses the 25 percent threshold.
“All told, there was no legal basis for the Tribunal to amend the 2010 PET Rules, particularly on the revisions of ballots. The RMA guidelines of the Comelec, which pertain to an entirely separate and distinct activity as the Comelec itself acknowledge, do not suffice,” the PET said.