By Ferdinand Patinio/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is looking to finish the random manual audit (RMA) of the 2019 midterm elections this week.
“We hope to complete the audit by Thursday this week,” said Commissioner Luie Guia, Comelec-RMA Committee head, in his Twitter account, @LTFGuia.
At the same time, the poll body official reported that only 80 sample precincts all over country are left to be audited as of Sunday.
“Update: 635 out of the 715 randomly selected sample precincts from all the 246 legislative districts nationwide have already been audited,” Guia added.
RMA involves comparing the precinct count by the VCMs (vote counting machines) with visual count and manual tally of the vote marks or shades on the ballot.
Variances are examined carefully and deliberated and decided by the RMA teams on whether to consider the shades as votes, based on a shading threshold for which the VCMs are calibrated.
The poll body official added that overvotes, undervotes, as well as incomplete and misplaced shades, are also tallied.
Votes that were audited are for the positions of senator, House of Representatives and mayor. The 2019 RMA started last May 15.
In the 2016 RMA report, there was a 99.90 accuracy rate in the performance of the VCMs. It added that the machine counts were “statistically equal” to the counts that resulted from the audit.
Section 29 of the Poll Automation Law provides that “there shall be a random manual audit in one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the Commission”.
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