Bongbong leading over Robredo in overseas voting

MANILA, Philippines - Vice presidential candidate Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is leading Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo by more than 72,000 votes among overseas Filipino voters.

As of press time, the running total of overseas votes for Marcos was 156,123, according to the tabulation disclosed by Commission on Elections   Commissioner Rowena Guanzon.

Robredo got 84,144 votes, indicating that Marcos was enjoying a lead of 72,979 votes.

The certificates of canvass from Tel Aviv, Rome and Bahrain are not yet in, Guanzon said.

It could not immediately be ascertained how many votes are involved in these three posts. The turnout for the overseas absentee voting is 429,802 voters.

Congress will canvass the votes for president and vice president, while Comelec is tabulating the votes for senators and party-list groups.

In the home front, Robredo has been leading Marcos based on the unofficial count of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting taken from the Comelec transparency server.

Meanwhile, PPCRV communications director Ana de Villa-Singson said yesterday some election returns might not be reflected on their electronic transmission screen.

Some election returns from local precincts have already been canvassed without transmitting the votes from the precinct to the Comelec transparency server, she added.

This could happen if the proper procedure has not been followed, Singson said.

Such is the case in Surigao province where the votes have already been canvassed but the PPCRV’s data showed that there are still more than 100,000 votes yet to be transmitted.

Singson said it is possible that their vote counting machine was not able to transmit so the SD card would be brought to the municipality.

“I know that the Comelec procedure required that if the VCM failed to transmit, before it goes up to the ladderized system of Comelec, it should first be transmitted to the transparency server,” she said.

“So it is possible that some of the votes that have already been canvassed we would not see here because these were not transmitted via the VCMs.”  

Yesterday morning, a Department of Foreign Affairs official told Singson that some of the votes from the overseas absentee voting have been canvassed, while those from the US are being consolidated from Washington.

It was also reported that there has been difficulty in transmitting to the Philippines the votes from Israel.

The PPCRV would continue operations because there are still areas sending results of the May 9 polls even if some precincts from the local regions and OAV would not be able to transmit the votes.

They would also be awaiting results of the special elections to be conducted today. 

As of yesterday afternoon, over 3,800 VCMs still could not transmit election results.

The PPCRV said that most of the 3,819 VCMs still could not transmit election results to the Comelec transparency server from OAVs and Mindanao as of 5:14 p.m. yesterday.

A total of 555 VCMs from polling precincts in the Middle East and Africa still have to transmit results, 310 from North and Latin America, 339 from Asia and 152 from Europe. These VCMs should supposedly account for around 980,000 registered voters.

Meanwhile, 333 VCMs from Lanao del Sur still need to transmit election results, 207 from Surigao del Sur, 158 in Maguindanao and 160 in Sulu. – Sheila Crisostomo, Evelyn Macairan, Ghio Ong