3,664 teachers mobilized for manual vote audit

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Education (DepEd) is mobilizing 3,664 public school teachers nationwide to do the random manual audit (RMA) at precincts all over the country on Monday, election day.

Education Secretary Mona Valisno said the DepEd was coordinating with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the deployment of teachers who would serve in RMA teams.

“We want our elections to succeed so we are cooperating and working closely with the Comelec to ensure that the audit is conducted in the randomly selected precincts on Monday. These teams shall manually audit the election results,” said Valisno.

The deployment of RMA teams is in compliance with Comelec Resolution 8837, which provides for the conduct of RMA for the May 10 elections.

DepEd is conducting the random audit based on another resolution dated April 30, 2010 under Republic Act 9369 or the Automated Election Law, which provides for the holding of such audit.

RMA teams will conduct a manual audit at the precinct level immediately after the transmission of results on May 10.

“We are holding this random manual audit to ensure the accuracy of the automated count done at the precinct level. Conducting an audit will encourage transparency, credibility and fairness in the elections,” said Valisno.

Members of the RMA team are different from those serving as Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs).

They are selected from public school teachers, giving “preference to those who served in the 2007 elections, but excluding those who will serve on May 10” as stated in the resolution.

A total of 1,145 clustered precincts nationwide shall be subjected to the audit.

In DepEd Memorandum No. 200, Undersecretary Franklin Sunga directed all regional directors and schools division superintendents to submit the names of 16 teachers per legislative district to the Comelec. They shall be assigned to conduct RMA in five randomly selected clustered precincts per legislative district.

Jonathan Malaya, DepEd assistant secretary for special projects and programs and department spokesman, said all superintendents must comply immediately with the directive since all RMA members must accomplish their appointment papers and take their oaths before the Comelec not later than 12 noon Monday.

Malaya said based on the resolution, a teacher might be appointed to the RMA team provided that he/she is a registered voter in the province where he or she is to serve, not related to any member of the BEI, and never been convicted of an election offense or has a pending case with Comelec.

He said RMA teams would be deployed immediately to their assigned precincts on election day, but would stay in a separate holding room in the school and witness the electronic canvassing of ballots and be informed of the results.

He stressed that manual audit should only cover the positions of president, vice president, members of House of Representatives, governor, and mayor.

He added that the audit should be held in public in the polling precinct.

Poll watchers, citizen’s arm or political party representatives should have no involvement in the proceedings except to observe, Malaya said.

“Copies of the audit reports are public documents. Thus, the results of the audit will be given to the dominant minority party, dominant majority party, and even to the KBP (Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas), as a matter of course,” he said.

BEIs’ registration reactivated

Meanwhile, the Comelec issued yesterday a resolution reactivating the voter’s registration of teachers serving as BEIs.

In Resolution 8878, the Comelec cited the “imperative need to activate the registration records of these BEIs for them to serve in the elections.”

Before this, the DepEd had complained to the Comelec that some 300,000 BEIs would be disenfranchised because their voter’s registrations were deactivated.

A voter gets disenfranchised after failing to vote for two consecutive elections. Since BEIs voted in the precincts where they are assigned on election day and not in their original precincts, their registration had been deactivated, the DepEd said.

As a rule, a teacher cannot serve as a BEI if he is not a registered voter.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said BEIs could cast their votes in the original precincts where they are listed as they are given 30 minutes to leave their assigned precincts to do so. –-Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star) with Sheila Crisostomo