The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) ruled that null votes could not be counted, putting down hopes of vice presidential candidate Manuel “Mar” Roxas II of winning against close rival Jejomar "Jojo” Binay.

As of Wednesday’s canvassing in Congress, Binay leads the vice presidential race by 800,000 votes over Roxas. Binay has 13.6 million votes while Roxas has 12.8 million.

Liberal Party’s Roxas, through his lawyers, called for a review of the election tallies in light of the so-called null votes in the certificates of canvass (CoCs) being processed by the joint congressional panel. Roxas' lawyer Joey Tenefrancia in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel said that as much as 2.6 million votes for the vice-presidency alone were considered by Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines as “null votes.”

Null votes refer to votes not counted by the PCOS machines for any of the following reasons --improper shading, undervoting or overvoting for a specific position.

Tenefrancia noted the high number of “null votes” in almost every certificate of canvass (COC) canvassed by the Joint Committee of Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers for President and Vice-President.

“We must uphold the will of the people, not the will of the machines,” Tenefrancia said in Filipino in an interview with radio DZMM.

Comelec Chair Jose Melo pointed out that it cannot count the votes that were not cast. "How can you count if the people did not vote?" chairman Jose Melo said.

In an interview with Philippine Star online, Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said that null votes and “stray votes,” which were common in manual elections, are the same and they could not be used in electoral protest cases.

“Nullified votes can mean a stray vote or a person simply does not want a particular candidate for a particular position. How do you know if an over-vote should be counted for one candidate or the other?” Larrazabal added.

Several lawmakers have voiced out concerns over the null votes.

“If your votes are not counted, you are technically disenfranchised,” Speaker Prospero Nograles said in an interview with the Inquirer.net. He said that null votes could also result when the PCOS machines could not read the vote.

Aside from Nograles, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and Quezon Representative Lorenzo Tanada III said the number of null votes was “alarming” and should be looked into.

Tanada said the null votes could make or break the position of vice president and that it could be a subject of an electoral protest.”

Binay’s reaction

Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino’s Binay said that Roxas is not entitled to null votes.

“It’s either the voter abstained or made a mistake of shading more than one (name of candidate). Let’s not make an issue out of a non-issue, there’s no disenfranchisement involved,” Binay’s counsel Aquilino Pimentel III, said.