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ATENEO STUDENT JUDICIAL COURT Ateneo de Manila University - Loyola Schools Barangay Loyola Heights, Quezon City

SANGGUNIAN VICE-PRESIDENT RYAN CARL YU, SANGGUNIAN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTONIO RAFAEL ELICANO, SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES CHAIRPERSON REDENTOR JOHN DIMLA, SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT SECRETARY-TREASURER ALEXANDRA FELICE TANJANCO, 2ND YR SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING CENTRAL BOARD REPRESENTATIVE PAMELA GAERLAN, 2ND YR SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT CENTRAL BOARD REPRESENTATIVE RAY CRISTOFER GOMEZ, IGNITE VICE-PRESIDENT FOR INTERNALS VANESSA DEL ROSARIO, GABRIEL CRISANTO NOLASCO, JAMES GREGORY TIENG Petitioner-Appellant

Case No. 2014-001

Promulgated: February 20, 2014

versus

COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS Respondent-Appellee x----------------------------------------------------------------------------------x TO: Mr. Ryan Carl Yu, Sanggunian Vice-President, and Ms. Denise Olondriz, COMELEC Chief Commissioner IN RE: Decision on Petition for Review Re: COMELEC Decision on Petition for Extension of the Electoral Period for the 2014 Sanggunian General Elections

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ATENEO STUDENT JUDICIAL COURT DECISION 02202014 EN BANC PER CURIAM: Pertinent to the cause of this decision are the following: On February 19, 2014, Mr. Ryan Yu, Sanggunian Vice President, et al. (hereinafter referred to as the Petitioner-Appellant) filed a petition to the Ateneo Commission on Elections (herei nafter referred to as the Respondent-Appellee). The said petition prays for an extension of the Sanggunian General Elections for two (2) days. The reasons for the said petition were insufficient time allotted for the said event, technical errors during the voting proper, and inconsistencies with the Respondents announcements, all of which contributing to undue voter fatigue. Consequently on the same date, the Respondent dismissed the petition for extension. The reasons for the dismissal were that the original election dates were unaffected by the alleged fatigue, that providing the option to vote through hard ballots effectively addressed the alleged issue of the voters system distrust, and that the Respondent presented sufficient computations that justified the adequacy of the time allotted for the voting proper. Consequently on the same date still, the Petitioners filed a petition for certiorari to the Ateneo Student Judicial Court (hereinafter referred to as the Court). The said petition assails the validity of the provided computations and the effectiveness of the undertaken efforts of the Respondents in addressing the issue of voter fatigue. xxx The Court finds the petition partially meritorious. On the issue of the insufficiency of time allotted for voting, the Court questions the validity of Petitioner-Appellants computation. In the computation of the original petition, a student is assumed to need an average of 4.57 minutes in order to vote. This is in contrast with the TimeMotion Study conducted by COMELEC, which assumes 3 minutes to be the required time to vote. It can be gleaned from the Petitioner-Appellants own Time-Motion Study that they failed to provide adequate justification for the 4.57-minute assumption for the required time to vote, and failed to at least give credible citation (through a footnote or otherwise) as to why the 4.57minute average should apply. The Court thus accepts Respondent-Appellees assumption that 3 minutes is the required time for one student to cast his vote because COMELEC presumptively holds greater expertise and
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professional competency in determining such relevant data in their Time-Motion Study, in the absence of a justification for the 4.57-minute average coming from an unofficial study. However, the Court agrees with Petitioner-Appellant that COMELECs Time-Motion Study should not have separated the computations for the students who were affected by the technical difficulties and for those who were not. Separating the total time needed for the affected students and unaffected students assumes that they voted on two separate occasions (i.e. that only 6,800 students voted on the first three days). The fact that the affected students consumed voting time during the first three days disqualifies this assumption. As it is, because the affected students also voted during the first three days, the assumption must be that the total number of students allowed to vote at this time was 8,000. Thus it cannot be said that the 21,900 minutes supposedly given to the 6,400 unaffected voters (who need only 20,400 minutes if the affected voters were not included) applies because the actual scenario is a case where both affected and non-affected students (comprising a total of 8,000) voted at the same time. Therefore the computations cannot be made separate. In which case, Petitioner-Appellant is correct in pointing out that even with the assumption that 3 minutes is required for one student to vote, the total time for all students to vote is still insufficient, as shown by their computations. This Court ruled in Decision 02202011:
The Electoral Code stipulates the capability of COMELEC to extend the Elections should the need for such an extension arise. While the Court is aware that the minimum requirement for the elections to be considered valid is the accumulation of 50%+1 votes coming from the entire student body, the Court believes that the sanctity of the ballot places greater emphasis on the equal opportunity to vote, which, in this case, would be shown or indicated by the time allotted to be able to accommodate and ensure 100% voter turnout.

On the issue of Undue Voter Fatigue due to Technical Errors and Inconsistent Announcements, the Court finds Petitioner-Appellants arguments meritorious. In the first place, COMELECs numerous technical errors and inconsistent announcements give sufficient reason to believe that the circumstances arising from such shortcomings have created an environment susceptible to general distrust in and confusion regarding the electoral process. The Court does not fault Respondent-Appellee for the technical errors or inconsistent announcements in themselves because COMELEC has responded to these appropriately by fixing said errors and allowing the students whose votes were not counted to vote again, having given a two-day extension to accomplish this. However, it must be impressed upon Respondent-Appellee that scenarios where voters may have been disenfranchised due to their shortcomings are not
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farfetched. Discouragement from voting due to a system compromised by deficiencies, as well as inconsistent and confusing statements, gives probable cause for disenfranchisement. To extend the election period would be one possible way to rectify the general loss of votes. Secondly, Petitioner-Appellant successfully argued that simply allowing voters to cast their votes on hard ballots does not adequately address the issue of possible voter disenfranchisement due to mistrust. As it is, the option to use hard ballots was never publicized. Disenfranchisement could
not have been properly addressed because such an option was never sufficiently communicated to the student body. Thirdly, the Court agrees with Petitioner-Appellant that COMELECs faults give credible reason to believe in said disenfranchisement. While the Court commiserates with Respondent-Appellee in that they have exerted laudable efforts to cope with the system failure, such as extending the election period for the 19 courses affected, these efforts do not suffice to respond to the problems encountered and for all the reasons stated above. The Court deems it a just and equitable decision to lawfully extend the election period to compensate for these difficulties. The assurance of free, honest, and fair elections as per Article XIV Section 3 (i) of the 2005 Constitution must prevail, as the extraordinary circumstances would merit. WHEREFORE, petition is hereby granted. Respondent-Appellee is ordered to extend the election period for all elected positions by two (2) days. SO ORDERED.

Affirmative: Roy Lambert Guerra, Chief Magistrate Leo Francis Abot, Magistrate for Internal Affairs Administration Lorenzo Pepito, Magistrate for Human Resources Ryan Gregory Nicolas, Magistrate for External Affairs Dissenting Danielle Joanna Gaite, Magistrate for Audit (subject to my dissenting opinion)
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Aldwin Segismundo, Magistrate for Project and Operations Management (subject to my dissenting opinion)