MANILA - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) formally urged the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday to reverse its unanimous ruling ordering the poll body to activate the feature in the vote counting machines (VCMs) that prints voter's receipts in the upcoming elections.

In a 13-page motion for reconsideration (MR) filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on its behalf, the Comelec reiterated its position that the paper ballot is itself the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

"In a paper-based election system, the paper ballot, manually filled out and personally fed into the VCM by the voter, is the best evidence of the votes cast. It is also the VVPAT since it 'faithfully captures or represents the votes cast by a voter recorded or to be recorded in electronic form.' It allows post-election system auditability for verifying the correctness of reported election results, and provides the voter an independent system of verification to find out whether the machine has registered his/her choice," the Comelec MR read.

The Comelec said "the law (RA No 8436, also known as the Automated Election System Law, as amended) does not require each voter to personally verify whether the VCMs have been able to count their votes."

The Comelec stressed that in a paper-based election system, which is the one employed in the May polls, numerous audit trails of the votes cast are in place "which protect the sanctity of the vote." These are: (1) the paper ballot, (2) the ballot image, (3) storage media cards, and (4) the on-screen verification functionality.

"In this instance where there is a paper audit trail of the paper ballot and other various electronic audit trails, the issuance of a voting receipt is a surplusage," the MR read.

READ: SC order on voter's receipts shakes Comelec's timeline

FAR-REACHING IMPLICATIONS ON PREPARATIONS FOR MAY POLLS

The Comelec also pointed out that the high court "must carefully weigh the far-reaching implications of its ruling on the conduct of the May 2016 elections."

"There is a strong likelihood that the May 2016 elections will fail if the voting receipt feature is enabled by the Comelec at this very late stage of the project... the printing of voting receipt alone takes 13 seconds to print. Assuming that there are 800 voters per clustered precinct and an average of 75% voter turn-out or 600 voters, it will take an additional time of at least 2 hours and 10 minutes for all voters to leave the VCM.

"Printing of voting receipts will lead to longer lines which may discourage voters from exercising their right of suffrage... Printing of voting receipts will impact both the schedule and cost to operations for the May 2016 elections and, based on the Comelec's initial assessments and recommendations, will entail additional risks and expenditures," the MR read.

The Comelec also said the existing paper cutter in the VCM is only designed for cutting election returns, which means "a heavy duty cutter upgrade will be needed for the voter's receipts."

"The hardware and software without a printer/cutter upgrade on the VCMs will not be able to cut the printed receipt automatically, thereby increasing the rate and likelihood of paper jams and printer failures dramatically, as when a voter tears the printed receipt and yanks the existing paper cutter. This will cause a 20% failure receipt and yanks the existing paper cutter," the MR read.

READ: Comelec chief: SC ignored poll body's expertise

The Comelec said the SC should uphold its ruling in Roque vs. Comelec, which involved the lease of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines for use in the 2010 elections, where it was argued that PCOS machines did not satisfy the system auditability requirement.

Quoting the SC decision in Roque, the Comelec said, "[I]t may suffice to point out that PCOS, being a paper-based technology, affords audit since the voter would be able, if need be, to verify if the machine had scanned, recorded and counted his vote properly."

The Comelec said it should be given "broad discretion" to ascertain how the VVPAT is implemented.

Voting unanimously at 14-0, the SC granted the petition of Bagumbayan-VNP Movement and former Senator Richard Gordon and ordered the poll body to activate the VCM's VVPAT feature and print voter's receipts.