By Minka Klaudia Tiangco
Over 600 out of the 715 randomly selected sample precincts have been audited as of Sunday afternoon, a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official said.
Commission on Elections (MANILA BULLETIN)
As of 5 p.m. on Sunday, 635 of the randomly selected sample precincts have been audited, said Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia in a tweet.
The poll official said the random manual audit (RMA) may be finished by Thursday.
Votes from randomly selected clustered precincts are manually counted and compared with the automated tally through the RMA to ensure that there are no discrepancies.
Guia said volunteers from the Legal Network for Free Elections (LENTE) and the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) act as audit supervisors to ensure the integrity of the audit process.
Overvotes, undervotes, and incomplete and misplaced shades, are also tallied during the RMA, he added.
"Variances are examined carefully and when manual tallying errors are eliminated, the RMA team, composed of three teacher-auditors, deliberate and decide on whether to consider the shades as votes based on a shading threshold for which the VCMs are calibrated," Guia said.
The poll official also expressed his "admiration and gratitude" to the members of the Legal Network for Free Elections (LENTE), the Comelec, the Department of Education-National Capital Region (DepEd-NCR), and the Philippine Statistics Authority who make up the RMA team.