Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia announced that the poll body will begin on May 14 the Random Manual Audit (RMA) for the May 12 midterm elections.
According to Comelec Education and Information Department (EID) Dir. Abigail Claire Llacuna, who is also part of the technical working group (TWG) for the RMA, the said audit of 762 clustered precincts and online voting posts will be made in Citadines Bay City Manila in Pasay City and that they target to finish it in 45 days.
The RMA is a post-election check which aims to verify the accuracy of the automated results of the elections, through manual counting of ballots, which will then be compared to the machine tallies.
On Monday, the Comelec held an electronic raffle to randomly select precincts and overseas posts that will be included in the RMA.
Based on Resolution 11089, the number of precincts that will be included in the audit per legislative district will depend on the number of clustered precincts it has.
Those that will undergo RMA are votes for senators, party-lists, district representatives and mayors.
Garcia said that in case of inconsistencies found on the manual and automated results, the Comelec will conduct an investigation which may result in the holding of a full manual recount in the affected areas.
