MANILA – The random manual audit (RMA) being conducted by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on automated counting machines used during the May 12, 2025, midterm elections has yielded accurate results.
According to Comelec chairman George Erwin Garcia, RMA done on 762 ballot boxes as of Friday afternoon last week so far indicated 99.997% accuracy, higher than the 99.94% in the 2022 national polls.
“So far, of the 723 ballot boxes subjected to random manual audit, 99.997% ‘yung accuracy ng atin pong machines… yung count ng machine at saka nung manual counting,” Garcia said.
Comelec officially started last month the RMA for 762 randomly selected clustered precincts and one online voting post for the 2025 national and local elections.
During the RMA, 60 auditing teams from the Department of Education were tasked to check the performance of the automated counting machines (ACMs) and examine the ballots from the clustered precincts to validate their accuracy.
Section 29 of the Automated Election System (AES) Act states that “there shall be a random manual audit in one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the Commission in each province and city” where the automated election system is used.
The RMA has maintained a 99.9% accuracy rate since the 2010 automated elections, Garcia stressed./PN
