Ateneo law students want 25% threshold on vote validity

A group of law students from the Ateneo de Manila University on Friday asked Solicitor General Jose Calida to support the 25-percent threshold in determining the validity of votes in the ongoing manual recount of vice presidential votes.

The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) represents the Commission on Elections (Comelec), which has been ordered to comment on Vice President Leni Robredo's appeal convincing, for the second time, the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to apply the 25-percent threshold.

"As students of the law, we are imploring your good office as counsel for the Comelec to prevent the disenfranchisement of votes and to present the rule as it should be applied," the two-page letter from the law students said.

"To ensure that people's voices are heard through their votes, it is necessary that we use the same threshold for all positions in the 2016 elections."

The PET currently uses a 50-percent threshold in a manual recount of votes from Camarines Sur, Negros Oriental and Iloilo that is part of former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s challenge to Robredo's victory in the 2016 polls.

This has led to a "systematic decrease" of her votes, Robredo contended, which the PET called "without basis and shows a misunderstanding of the revision process."

Her reference was a Comelec en banc resolution dated September 6, 2016 which said that while voters in the 2016 polls were instructed to shade ballot ovals fully, "the shading threshold was set at about 25% of the oval space."

The PET had earlier said it was "not aware of any Comelec Resolution that states the applicability of a 25% threshold."—