In his petition, Roxas asked the Supreme Court, which sits as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, to consider more than 2 million null votes that were not counted by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
Null votes were not counted because the ballots were incorrectly shaded, were not shaded at all or the shaded ovals exceeded the number of elective positions.
Based on this – and not having seen the Roxas petition at all – there are three categories of null votes. Those that were (1) incorrectly shaded; (2) not shaded at all; and (3) over-shaded. Hmm. Sounds familiar.
[nggallery id=1]In any case, I imagine that anyone called to testify on these matters at a hearing of the Presidential Election Tribunal would probably say:
1. Incorrectly shaded ballots are not probable as the PCOS rejects ballots where the shade-marks cover less than 50% of the oval; and that in any case, even if there are such ballots, the rule is that marks that do not make the 50% threshold will NOT be counted, even in a manual recount.
2. Ballots with no votes for vice-president … I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a protest where the protesting party wants the Tribunal to essentially read the minds of the people who abstained, to divine who they would have voted for had they actually voted. And if the Tribunal is gonna do that for these “null votes,” why not have it do the same parlor trick for all the 20 million or so who didn’t come to the polling places at all?
3. How can you tell which candidate should get the vote in cases of over-voted ballots? You simply can not as this is a rank impossibility. Therefore, the PCOS – as the Tribunal probably would – treats such votes as stray, i.e., none of the candidates get the vote.
But wait.
According to machine vendor Smartmatic-TIM, the PCOS machines will have to be reconfigured to count ballots that had only partially shaded ovals.
Does this mean that Roxas will be asking the PCOS recount to change the ballot appreciation rules that applied to every other candidate? Where before the PCOS refused to count ovals not shaded up to the 50% threshold, are they now going to ask that the PCOS – during the recount they’re asking for – count even those partial markings?
Doesn’t sound kosher at all.
