The Commission on Elections said it expects to proclaim the winning 12 senators as well as party-list groups as early as Saturday (May 17) as 98.9 percent of the election returns have been received by the National Board of Canvassers yesterday.
Comelec chairman George Garcia said while the remaining certificates of canvass (COCs) may no longer affect the results, the poll body needs to process 100 percent of the ballots.
“We can proclaim winning senators by Saturday or Sunday,” he said. “It’s quite fast. As you can see, 98.9% is already there, just a little piece is missing.”
“Even if the missing part is absent, as long as it can be sent to us at the national board, perhaps the remaining results will have no effect. But of course, the Comelec needs to have a 100% canvass. No single COC should be left behind when the Comelec conducts the canvass,” Garcia added.
Comelec transparency servers showed the transmitted local ERs stood at 99.1 percent.
This translates to 92,548 out of the total 93,387 expected ERs. This means that for the local voting, only 839 ERs have not been sent.
As for the overseas voting, there are only 17 ERs remaining, with 92.7 percent of the total expected ERs from foreign posts already received by the poll body.
Regarding the COCs, or final vote tallies from Comelec, 97.32 percent or 1,599 of 1,643 certificates for city and municipal races have been received.
For the provincial and district COCs, 64 have already been sent, with 20 others still awaiting transmittal.
The Comelec, sitting as the NBOC, started canvassing the votes for senatorial candidates and party-list groups Tuesday.