The Supreme Court (SC) recently ruled that votes clearly cast for a nuisance candidate, whose certificate of candidacy (COC) is cancelled will be considered stray votes and instead of being counted in favor of any candidate.
The SC on Wednesday voted to abandon precedent under existing jurisprudence that votes cast for nuisance candidates are counted in favor of the legitimate candidate since voter’s intent cannot be determined on the ballot face.
However, the high court determined that this is no longer applicable under the automated election system (AES).
‘Under AES, the Court said that there will no longer be ‘vague votes’ because the voting machines will base their count on the full names with aliases of each candidate, as shaded in the ballots, as opposed to the manual elections where the voters had to handwrite the name of their chosen candidates, there should no longer be any room for confusion under the AES,’ the SC said in a statement on Thursday.
Also, the SC emphasized that the previous precedent ‘had no basis in law’ as ‘clear tenor’ of Sections 69 and 211 of the Omnibus Election Code stated that a nuisance candidate is deemed to have never filed a COC in the first place and therefore the votes cast for them are considered stray.
‘A rule that is without unequivocal basis in law and supplants people’s choices on the basis of perceived errors in the way they had cast their vote usurps the very sovereign will that the rule intends to protect,’ the high court said.
The outcome of Negros Oriental gubernatorial race have changed, thanks to the old rule of crediting the votes obtained by nuisance bet to another candidate who had a tragic end.
In 2022, the Commission on Elections invalidated the victory of then incumbent Negros Oriental governor Pryde Henry Teves after the poll body credited the votes obtained by nuisance bet ‘Ruel Degamo’ to defeated gubernatorial candidate Roel Degamo.
Roel Degamo along with nine others were killed in a gun attack in the governor’s residence in Pamplona town on March 4, 2023.
Pryde Henry was later implicated in their murder by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.