Did hocus-PCOS do this in your town in 2022?

STO. TOMAS, Batangas – This town of 30 barangays had only 153 precincts in Election 2022. Yet four candidates for mayor got identical votes in many precincts. In others, the three “losers” got 1, 2 or 3 additional or fewer votes.

Statistically impossible, say mathematicians, election experts and info technologists. More so since the losers, all long-time electees, fell even in their bailiwick villages. Comelec proclaimed as landslide mayor someone who has never before won election.

The three losers – Armenius Silva, Fausto Manzanilla, Timothy Almeda – protested a week after Election Day. Yet Comelec for nearly two years has been sitting on their petition for manual ballot recount. The poll body frequently brags that the 2022 voting was the cleanest ever, but seems uninclined to prove it.

Hocus-PCOS came to play in Sto. Tomas. PCOS, or precinct count optical scanner, is the automated system that Comelec used in Elections 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022. Venezuelan supplier Smartmatic earned P25 billion in all, P3.12 billion in 2022 alone.

Fraudulent results arose from a series of events and factors, Silva, Manzanilla and Almeda told Sapol-dwIZ. Thinking Filipinos might find parallels in reviewing their own locales: 2022electionresults.comelec.gov.ph. Consider:

(1) Arth Marasigan is a political tyro. Appointed city administrator in 2018, he ran but lost against the incumbent mayor in 2019. He took a break from politics for three years. In 2022 Comelec proclaimed him mayor. Total votes: 46,929 out of 93,309 ballots cast.

(2) Silva was incumbent vice mayor in 2022. Since 1998 he has been elected twice as councilor and five times as vice mayor. “I’ve helped citizens rise as Sto. Tomas transformed from Class B to Class A municipality then into a city,” he said. Yet he lost to Marasigan by 25,188 votes.

He even flunked in all precincts in his childhood and present home – Barangays IV and Santa Clara. “It’s impossible that my parents, offspring, siblings, neighbors and friends junked me:”

• Brgy. IV Precinct 10280022: Silva, 236; Marasigan, 271;

• Brgy. IV Precinct 10280023: Silva, 243; Marasigan, 277;

• Brgy. IV Precinct 10280024: Silva, 241; Marasigan, 267.

Total: