Ballot boxes missing, poll returns tampered at House

Congressional cover-up of gloria’s poll fraud caught on video. From the Tribune:

More concrete evidence of the poll fraud engaged in by President Arroyo and subsequent cover up of the crime have surfaced, with over 150 ballot boxes containing election returns (ERs) from Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte and Surigao del Sur found missing at the House of Representatives, which has been tasked to safeguard these ballot boxes and their content. This was reportedly caught on video, as the House security cameras should have caught this.

According to witnesses who are willing to testify to the ballot box tampering and switching of ERs, these were done with the assistance of the President's congressional allies.

Also discovered were tampered ballot boxes from Tabagon, Cebu, with the provincial election officer of Cebu, Edwin Cadungog, exposing the massive tampering of ballot boxes through his report submitted to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Cadungog stressed that most of the padlocks of the 120 old ballot boxes and 103 new ballot boxes used by the town in last year's polls were lost and the inside security seals had been destroyed, noting that 350 of the 360 padlocks of the old ballot boxes and 303 out of the 390 padlocks of the new ballot boxes, or a total of 661 padlocks were lost.

Lawyer Sixto Brillantes said the opposition camp had expected to get over 200 boxes of election returns from the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte and Surigao del Sur but were able to obtain only 48 boxes, which were retrieved from the House for transfer to the Supreme Court, which is hearing the protest of vice presidential bet former Sen. Loren Legarda.

Members of the minority bloc in the Lower House said the ballot boxes would likely have been tampered with, as the makeshift stockroom at the Southwing Lobby of Congress had been broken in and left opened several times.

San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora stressed the opposition bloc has six witnesses who can testify that the ballot boxes stored in the stockroom were “tampered with and switched.”

“There have been many instances of unauthorized entries to the stockroom. This was where the switching of ballots occurred,” Zamora said during the minority's weekly press conference yesterday.

He said the six, who had agreed to testify, were used by Mrs. Arroyo's allies when the stockroom was opened on Dec. 24, 2004 to replace the contents of the ballot boxes.

House Minority Leader Francis Escudero challenged Speaker Jose de Venecia to release the footage of the 24-hour surveillance camera situated near the stockroom.

More from Malaya here.

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