00:00The Commission on Elections, or COMELEC, on Bank has approved to lower the threshold of the automated counting machines for the 2025 elections to 15% from the previous 25%.
00:10This means that even a dot inside the checkbox or circle for shading will be read by the machine as a counted vote.
00:17According to COMELEC Chair George Erwin Garcia, this will lessen the complaints and questions of their votes not being counted for not being shaded completely or properly.
00:29But still, the COMELEC asked the public to still accomplish the required shading within the circle.
00:32Based on COMELEC's data for the 2022 elections alone, about 100 votes weren't counted by the VCMs for the position of President due to the high threshold,
00:42while for Senators, there were more than 900 unread votes.
00:47Therefore, for the election of 2025, our threshold is 15%.
00:53And based on our observation, what we see is correct.
00:56The one dot of the pen that we will use in the election is almost 20%.
