City election officer Marchel Sarno said that they expect to finish the canvassing of votes in the south district and proclaim the winning candidates tonight.
Out of 41 ballot boxes in the south, 28 were already canvassed as of 5 p.m. yesterday. Each ballot box contains at least 30 election returns from different precincts in the south, which has about 1,700 voting precincts.
The city Commission on Elections office has received at least 20 motions for deferment from the camp of south district congressional candidate Jonathan Guardo over the lack of statistical data on the election returns that caused delay in the canvassing of the votes in the south district.
During canvassing yesterday afternoon, it was discovered that precinct No. 1594A located in Guadalupe has two sets of election returns with the same serial numbers, lawyer Rico Tautho of Tribu Guardo immediately asked for the deferment of the canvassing of the mentioned precinct and asked the board of election inspectors assigned in the precinct to explain.
But Sarno explained that the duplication of the election returns was not intentional and it was not the mistake of the Comelec but of the National Printing Office that printed the ERs.
“If it was done maliciously, both ERs could have been filled up but only one was filled up by the BEIs. Tingali na-deliver og duha,” the election official said.
He added that the BEIs also “innocently” put the two ERs together in a ballot box. “We defer its canvassing and we will decide on that,” Sarno said.
He said other ERs also lack some pages like the one in precinct No.1677A, which does not have a page for national positions. With this, the BEIs wrote the names of the senators and their votes on a sheet of bond paper and had it signed and thumb marked.
Meanwhile, Allan Gaviola, one of the lawyers of Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan said that the problems on lack of statistical data in some election returns caused a delay in the canvassing.
He said the problem is caused by the failure of the board of election inspectors to put the number of voters in the election returns.
To solve the problem, Gaviola said that they compromised with the other camp that they should compare the ER that lack statistical data with the other ERs from the same precinct and if they match, they canvass them.
Earlier, reelectionist Mayor Tomas Osmeña said that the Comelec is quite slow in the canvassing of votes in the city. The canvassing of votes in the south district is not even finished while the ERs from the north district are still waiting to be canvassed. — Wenna A. Berondo/BRP