Disenfranchised

FIRST PERSON

- ALEX MAGNO

Namfrel reports that a total of 18,499,817 "overvotes" were recorded in the May 12 elections. Of this total number, 17,028,780 were voted for the Senate race.

This is a staggering number. We look forward to a long and tedious process of a manual audit in the months to come. The high number of ballots discounted for "overvoting" clearly explains why the winning threshold for winning a seat in the Senate is strangely lower this cycle than in previous electoral cycles despite the very high voter turnout.

"Overvoting" happens when more names are shaded on the ballot than the number of elective positions at stake. When this happens, the automatic counting machines (ACMs) invalidate the vote.

The International Observer Mission (IOM) concluded, considering the whole context of elections in the Philippines, that the "elections were neither free nor open, honest nor fair." That might be a harsh judgment.

Of the 1,362 adverse election reports tallied by the IOM, 693 were tagged "ACM errors." No wonder there is hardly anyone praising the efficacy of the P18-billion counting system the Comelec contracted from a consortium led by South Korean firm Miru.

In 2019, a mere 1.1 million Senate "overvotes" were recorded. But that was enough to cause the Senate to launch a full-scale investigation into the matter. The findings of that investigation, like many other such legislative oversight investigations, was never fully disclosed.