A TOTAL of 640 students voted on the final day of the Sanggunian General Elections, according to the Ateneo Commission on Elections (COMELEC). After revising the Day 2 tally of votes from 271 to 224, the partial three-day aggregate number of votes is now at 1,168, or a turnout of about 18.5%. The count does not include absentee ballots. COMELEC is set to announce the results today at 5PM.
Last night, COMELEC announced on its Facebook page that it had made a mistake on its count of the partial votes for Day 2 (March 28). COMELEC’s original count of 271 had included 47 “duplicate votes.” COMELEC explained that the mistake was due to a “clerical error” in its post-tallying system.
According to the post, votes are inputted into a data file which is copied onto a specific compiling folder where all data files from other polling stations are collected. A Java application is then activated to tally the votes from each data file in the compiling folder. After the final tally for the day, the original data files are manually deleted. The following day, a new data file is created with the input of a new vote.
COMELEC said that 47 duplicate votes came from Day 1 because they had not been manually deleted before Day 2. The Board of Commissioners assured students that the integrity of the votes were not compromised by this oversight. This means that Day 2 partial votes only amount to 224, or less the 47 duplicate votes from the previous tally.
“Should the any concerned students, groups, candidates, political parties, press organisations or the Sanggunian itself wish to verify this information, it is more than open to do so by setting an appointment with the COMELEC for a full demonstration of the automated offline electoral system and the manner in which the error came about by Chief Commissioner Dom Rañises,” COMELEC said.
The restructuring of the Sanggunian General Elections after the passage of the 2016 Loyola Schools Undergraduate Constitution saw the removal of the election quota, making it easier for a candidate to be elected to office and preventing failures of election.
In the wake of the removal of the quota, independent presidential candidate Regis Andanar believes this election emphasized voters “who genuinely want to engage the Sanggunian and participate in campus politics.”
Meanwhile, Union of Students for the Advancement of Democracy presidential candidate Ia Marañon found this as an opportunity for the Sanggunian to improve. “It’s a challenge for the Sanggunian to actually step up,” she said.
“Whoever gets elected to the Sanggunian to go beyond from what it’s doing now [because] we cannot have a Sanggunian-centric Sanggunian anymore,” she added.
