Young to Request Comelec for Manual Counting of Rejected Ballots

Outgoing Cebu City Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young is planning to request the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct a manual counting of votes for those ballots that were rejected by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

According to Young he will make the request to the Comelec if the number of rejected ballots will reach 1,000. Young issued the statement a day after the Board of Election Canvassers (BEC) proclaimed his opponent Councilor Edgardo Labella as the duly elected vice mayor whose term will commence on July 1.

Young claimed that he received reports that there were many ballots that were not scanned by the PCOS machines probably because the concerned voters just shaded a small portion of the ballots is not enough for the scanners to detect and read it.

He also said another report reaching the headquarters of the Bando Osmeña Pundok-Kauswagan (BOPK) was that there were some manipulations so that the mayoralty and vice mayoralty candidates of Team Rama will win.

Reelectionist Mayor Michael Rama has been proclaimed already by the BEC after getting over 6,000 votes over his political opponent Tomas R. Osmeña.

Aside from requesting the Comelec to conduct a manual counting of votes for those ballots that were rejected by the PCOS, he also said that BOPK is now studying to file the necessary cases against those who were involved in the sabotage.