715 precincts picked for random manual audit of 2019 polls

MANILA — The Random Manual Audit (RMA) Committee on Tuesday selected the 715 clustered precincts for the random manual audit of the just-concluded mid-term elections.

The 715 were selected from the 246 legislative districts initially picked on Monday using the Automated Random Selection software.

On Wednesday, the RMA Committee, composed of representatives of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the Commission on Elections (Comelec), and the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente), will convene for the audit process at the Diamond Hotel in Manila.

Weeks before the elections, poll watchdog Lente replaced the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) as the lead convenor of the RMA.

According to Comelec Commissioner Luie Guia, the committee would still be using the recommendation made by Namfrel upon their approval.

“Some of the things that we are doing are recommendations from Namfrel. I asked them, ‘Even if you are not with us anymore, if we can still use the improvements that you suggested, (they said) okay,’” he earlier told reporters.

The RMA is mandated under the law to ensure the transparency and credibility of the automated elections.

The committee will conduct the audit by comparing the count received from the vote counting machines against the manually tallied results from the same clustered precinct.