Marked Ballots De Guzman vs.

Sison Facts: -Hilario De Guzman was the winning mayoralty candidate in the 1998 elections for San Jacinto, Pangasinan -He called the Court's attention (and eventually filed a case afterwards) to alleged irregularities in the adjudication of the election protest filed by his rival Rolando Columbres, which was presided by respondent Judge Deodero Sison -Sison rendered a decision finding that the revision and physical counting of ballots in 42 precincts contested by Columbres showed that Columbres won, garnering 4,037 votes as against De Guzman's 3,302 -In coming up with such decision, Sison nullified all the votes in favor of De Guzman in certain precincts, among them those ballots with undetached stubs (despite the provision in Section 211 (27) of the Omnibus Election that failure to remove the detachable coupon from a ballot does not annul such ballot) -Sison also nullified ballots with "X" marks, lines and similar marks despite the provision in Section 211 (21) of the Omnibus Election Code that circles, crosses or lines placed on spaces on which the voter has not voted shall be considered as signs of desistance from voting and shall not invalidate the ballot. -Sison gave a handful of mostly technical reasons in trying to justify the nullification of the alleged marked ballots, which was contradictory to existing law and jurisprudence -When asked to explain, Sison, pleading good faith, argued that whenever ballots contain obvious markings visible on their faces, the presumption is that said markings on the ballots were placed thereat by the voters themselves, thus nullifying the said ballots. Issue: W/N Sisons contentions have any merit Held: No. Ratio: The Court has consistently held that laws and statutes governing elections contests especially the appreciation of ballots must be liberally construed to the end that the will of the electorate in the choice of public officials may not be defeated by technical infirmities. The rule is that no ballot should be discarded as marked unless its character as such is unmistakable. The marks which shall be considered sufficient to invalidate the ballot are those which the voter himself deliberately placed on his ballot for the purpose of identifying it thereafter. In other words, a mark placed on the ballot by a person other than the voter himself does not invalidate the ballot as marked. There is no legal presumption that the alleged markings were deliberately made by the voter himself and for the purpose of identifying it thereafter. In the absence of any circumstance showing that the intention of the voter to mark the ballot is unmistakable, or any evidence to show that the words or marks were deliberately written or put therein to identify the ballots, the ballot should not be rejected. In other words, the ballots should be read with reasonable liberality, so that the reading be in favor of the will of the voter, rather than in favor of the inefficiency of the ballot by reason of technical causes.

Moreover, as a rule, slight variations in writing are not sufficient to show that the ballot was prepared by two hands and where there is doubt as to whether the names were written by two persons, the doubt must be resolved in favor of the validity of the ballot. (Sison was dismissed from the service for non-compliance with the Code of Judicial Ethics.)