Kontra Daya urges Comelec to recount ballots in 2022 polls

Election watchdog Kontra Daya on Monday called on the Commission of Elections (Comelec) to recount the votes garnered in select areas to settle alleged irregularities in the conduct of the 2022 national and local elections.

At a protest rally held in Plaza de Roma, Intramuros, which is in front of the Comelec headquarters, former Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr. dared the poll body to reopen some ballot boxes specifically in the city of Santo Tomas, Batangas.

“Sa Santo Tomas, Batangas halos lahat ng kandidato doon, ‘yung nanalo for example, 167 sa precinct ABC mga 12 na presinto, eksaktong eksaktong 167 ang nakuha. Ang natalo sa mga ganun din karaming presinto, eksaktong eksanto na 20,” Rio said.

(In Santo Tomas, Batangas, for example there are 12 precincts, a total of 167 votes were exactly counted in each precinct for the person who won the elections. For those who lost, 20 votes were exactly counted also from each of the precincts.)

“Sa mga IT, ‘yan ay manipulated,” he added.

(For IT workers, that is considered manipulated.)

In response, Comelec chairperson George Garcia said that the group’s motion will be included in the agenda of the en banc meeting scheduled on Wednesday.

Garcia has repeatedly insisted that the results of the 2022 polls were not rigged, noting that findings of the random manual audit of votes matched 99.93% of the election returns.

Following the May 9, 2022 polls, Kontra Daya claimed that an election fraud transpired, citing lack of transparency in the automated election system and lack of expert oversight and measures to ensure integrity, among others.

According to the Makabayan bloc, which sought a legislative inquiry into the matter, ''Rio's team of computer forensic examiners discovered that a significant percentage of precinct results in Metro Manila and two provinces were received from a single private IP address, namely 192.168.0.2.''

In October 2023, amid the investigation into the alleged irregularities in technology provider Smartmatic’s services during the 2022 polls, Garcia said he would propose to the Comelec en banc the opening of ballot boxes used in the elections. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News