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44 % of ballots wasted By MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN
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Posted on Nov 15 1999
At least 44 percent of the total number of absentee ballots received by the Board of Elections were wasted because of the voters’ failure to follow instructions, BOE Executive Director Gregorio Sablan said Friday.
Of the 424 absentee ballots, only 236 were validated and counted, while 188 were thrown away as “bad ballots.”
Most of the absentee voters are college students enrolled in colleges and universities in the mainland. A majority of them are government scholars.
Sablan said some of the ballots were rejected because they were “exposed.” The ballot was supposed to be folded in a way that its contents could not be seen when taken out of the envelop.
“When the ballots are exposed, we would know how they voted and that deprives the voter of the right to cast secret ballot,” Sablan said.
The elections board also rejected late ballots, as well as those with improper attachments and wrong documents.
Sablan said other students mailed their ballots after Nov. 5 (mainland time), ignoring the instruction for them to send their ballots before Nov. 6, the actual election day.
Other students sent notarized student certification, when they were specifically instructed to attach student affidavit authenticated by a school official.
Former Gov. Froilan C. Tenorio, who observed the tabulation process at the Multi-Purpose Building on Friday, expressed disappointment at the students’ failure to follow instructions.
“Those were very simple instructions. I don’t understand why they could not follow. And these are the students that the government is sending to college in the mainland,” said Tenorio, president of the Reform Party.
