Astray

(Photos of tv set, karera channel)

Because he doesn’t know yet whether he would be within the 12 in the final count (national canvass), he has not tried to get a prohibitory injunction to stop the proclamation of the twelfth; but by that time (the proclamation) it might be too late.

If Joselito Cayetano’s disqualification becomes final, say, today, will his votes go to Alan Cayetano in the canvass? Those votes are “Juju/ Jojo/ J. Cayetano” votes, aren’t they? That’s what the voters wrote on ballots that were counted in Joselito’s favor. That’s not what Alan Cayetano is after (as I understand it). He’s after the stray votes, or those votes that bear only “Cayetano”. But those votes were not set aside in the precincts. I don’t think they were recorded formally or informally either. I don’t know if the candidate himself has the number on that (I’m guessing it would help the Court decide faster if one showed the Court a number, say, one million stray votes recorded by pollwatchers and illustrate that that was enough to put the candidate at the top 12/ 10/ 9 etc.)

The GO spokesperson said a couple of days ago that they did not have their own quickcount, so I’m guessing that in areas where they had no local candidates (in 70% to 80% of the cities and municipalities) they had no allied pollwatchers. Each of the senatorial candidates were supposed to have his/ her own set of pollwatchers (that number is something like 200,000 – 300,000 in three or so shifts because they get tired), expensive!

Did you know that the Comelec blames the candidates if there is cheating? It goes like this, “how can you say there was cheating, you had pollwatchers!” That’s the Comelec line. If you hear that again, or a variation of it, it means that it’s not the Comelec’s job to prevent/ stop cheating; they just authorize and keep statistically improbable increases in registered voters and never post any information in the internet (in fact, on election day, the Comelec website and findprecinct website and other sites, were all down, even comelectxt2898 was down; don’t ask why I know. My name was not on the hard copies of the voters’ list, for the first time I could not get my precinct number, I had to do my own research, it took me two hours to get the number); issue memo’s to BEI’s telling them how to appreciate ballots by not counting Cayetano votes; and to order the media: stop tallying, don’t add, don’t consoldidate! Don’t think.