Commission on Elections clarifies 47,000 unaccounted ballots are not lost, merely resting, and will be processed in order received upon their voluntary return

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

INTRAMUROS, MANILA — The Commission on Elections issued a press statement Friday afternoon assuring the public that approximately 47,000 ballots from three provinces that could not be accounted for in the ongoing canvassing process were “not missing in any meaningful sense” and were “more accurately described as temporarily unlocated,” a distinction COMELEC spokesperson Atty. Marisol Campos-Enriquez spent twenty-two minutes explaining to reporters who had asked a question she described as “unfortunately reductive.”

The Canvassing Situation

The ballots in question, representing votes cast in Lanao del Norte, Sultan Kudarat, and what official documents refer to as “Precinct Cluster 7-Naga (Modified),” were last accounted for in transit records dated the morning after election day, at which point they were described as “en route” to canvassing centers. As of Friday, eleven days after election day, the transit journey appeared to be ongoing.

“Transit times in certain areas of Mindanao are subject to logistical variation,” Atty. Campos-Enriquez told reporters. “The ballots are in the system. The system is large. Finding specific items within a large system takes time, as anyone who has searched for anything in their email knows perfectly well.”

Asked whether ballot transit logistics could reasonably be compared to email search functionality, Atty. Campos-Enriquez said she was using an “explanatory analogy intended for clarity” and not making “a literal technological comparison,” and that the focus should be on the outcome, which she characterized as “a temporary processing gap within acceptable parameters.”

“Acceptable parameters” was not defined in the press statement. A follow-up question about what specifically those parameters were received a written response delivered fourteen minutes after the press conference ended, in which COMELEC clarified that acceptable parameters were “those within which the Commission determines that the integrity of the electoral process has been maintained,” a definition that three constitutional lawyers contacted by this publication described independently as “definitionally circular” and one described as “impressive in a way that takes a moment to fully appreciate.”

Historical Context Provides Little Comfort

The Manila Bulletin reviewed COMELEC press statements from the past six election cycles and found the phrase “temporarily unlocated” or functional equivalents had appeared in post-election communications in four of six instances, with resolution timelines ranging from three days to one case in 2013 where the ballots were ultimately classified as “administratively resolved,” a designation the Commission declined to define further.

Dr. Emmanuel Soriano-Bautista, Professor of Electoral Systems at Ateneo de Manila University and Director of the Institute for Philippine Democracy Studies, said the pattern suggested “a structural rather than incidental relationship between certain ballot consignments and their tendency to require extended recovery periods.”

“That is a very academic way of expressing concern,” he acknowledged. “I am an academic. It is what I have.”

COMELEC Reassures the Nation

Commissioner Victorino Alcala-Santos said the Commission was “actively monitoring” the situation and had deployed field operatives to the three affected areas. He confirmed that the ballots were “believed to be in the Philippines” and that their eventual recovery was “a matter of when, not if,” adding that he was “very confident” in a timeline he declined to specify on the grounds that specifying timelines created “expectations that logistical realities may not fully accommodate.”

In the meantime, Commissioner Alcala-Santos said, partial canvassing would continue using the ballots that were present, and that candidates in the affected races should take comfort in the knowledge that their margins in the currently-countable ballots were “indicative” of likely final outcomes, a characterization that the candidates trailing in those races described using words that were not included in the official press summary.

Public Reaction

Reaction among ordinary voters ranged from resigned familiarity to what one Mandaluyong resident described, with a brevity that this publication found refreshing, as “the usual.” Civic groups including the Manila Standard-affiliated election monitoring coalition called for an independent investigation and a full accounting of the ballot transit chain, noting that 47,000 votes represented the margin of victory in at least two of the races affected.

COMELEC said it welcomed the request for accountability and was fully committed to transparency in all its processes, and that the ballots, when found, would be counted normally, and that if anyone had information about their whereabouts they should contact the nearest COMELEC field office, the number for which was available on the Commission’s website, which was updated last in 2022.

As of press time, the ballots remained temporarily unlocated. COMELEC said it expected to have more information by Monday, a day it has cited in the previous three Friday press statements without the expected information materializing. Asked about this, Atty. Campos-Enriquez said Monday was a provisional timeline subject to logistical variation. The ballots, she confirmed, were still in the system. The system, she noted, was still large.

Independent election observers who monitored the canvassing process in the three affected provinces submitted formal incident reports to COMELEC describing what they characterized as “anomalous gaps in the ballot transit documentation chain” that they said preceded the ballots’ current temporarily unlocated status. The reports, running to a combined 340 pages, identify specific points in the transit timeline where documentation discontinuities occurred and request that COMELEC cross-reference those points with personnel deployment records. COMELEC acknowledged receipt of the reports, said they were “under review,” and noted that the review would be conducted by the same Canvassing Division whose personnel deployment records the reports were asking to examine, a circularity the Ombudsman’s office said it was “monitoring with interest” and COMELEC said was “standard procedure.”

Keeping count at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.

Also temporarily unlocated at The Onion | Waterford Whispers | The Beaverton

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/comelec-missing-ballots-temporarily-unlocated-philippines-election/