Third District Board Member Jade Acapulco Bautista exposed alleged anomalies that happened during the recent elections.
The board member, who ran and lost in the mayoralty race in Garcia-Hernandez town, spoke about alleged poll anomalies in a privilege speech delivered during the regular session of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) on May 24, 2022.
She started her speech by saying: “I am making this privilege speech, not as a defeated candidate but as a concerned citizen. This is also not an allegation of fraud but rather an observation of some irregularities which may or may not affect the results of the recently concluded National and Local Elections.”
She also said that she can’t remain “quiet” about the alleged anomalies that happened during the polls.
“Defeat, I accepted that but I cannot just keep quiet of what truly happened during the 2022 Elections,” she quipped.
Bautista then pointed out a particular situation alleging a poll anomaly that happened in Garcia-Hernandez town.
“Take for example, in Garcia-Hernandez, one barangay has declared 200 plus insufficient ballots at around 3pm. As a result, voters were distributed to other precincts and were even allowed to vote until 10:00 pm, when all polling precincts should have been closed at 7:00 pm. What’s worse was that they were escorted by some barangay officials all the way inside the polling precincts. This is a blatant abuse of authority,” the outgoing board member from the 3rd district said.
She then continued by saying: “At around 4:00 pm, an ally of the winning candidate posted on Facebook that their bet won at 2 barangays. How could this be? Isn’t it that the canvassing should start at 7:00 pm? Did they canvass the votes ahead of schedule? We will never know!”
Moreover, Bautista then narrated what happened a few days after the elections.
“Few days after the elections, we got hold of the official receipts from the vote counting machine as well as the manual tabulation of the results. We found out that there were 883 total unknown ballots casted and it was not mentioned whether these were spoiled ballots or what. If it were, don’t you all think this has a huge effect on the results?” she said.
The board member is asking the SP to take a look at the allegations seriously.
“With all of the foregoing, I would like this matter not to be taken lightly as this affects the sanctity and integrity of our votes. Let this matter reach the national government so improvements and/or changes have to be done with regards to the automated election system. Using the advanced technology such as PCOS [Precinct Count Optical Scanner] has its advantages for sure, but the glaring error on vote counting is indubitable,” Bautista asserted.
Meanwhile, matter has been referred to the Committee on Public Accountability chaired by Senior Board Member and Vice Governor-elect Dionisio Victor Balite.