Case Digest (G. R. No. 11573)
Facts:
Vicente Jaucian, Contestant and Appellant, vs. Pedro F. Callos, Conteste and Appellee, G.R. No. 11573, September 29, 1958, the Supreme Court En Banc, Bautista Angelo, J., writing for the Court.In the November 8, 1955 general elections for Mayor of Daraga, Albay, the municipal board of canvassers proclaimed Pedro F. Callos mayor-elect with a majority of 134 votes. Vicente Jaucian, the defeated candidate, filed an election protest in the Court of First Instance of Albay alleging mass fraud in at least ten precincts and seeking to set aside the proclamation.
After trial, the Court of First Instance reaffirmed Callos’s election but reduced the proclaimed majority to 68 votes; a subsequent joint motion corrected an arithmetic error and the majority was reported as 67 votes. The trial court treated certain irregular ballots as stray votes and thus counted them for the protestee (Callos). Jaucian appealed directly to the Supreme Court on the ground that the questions raised were purely questions of law.
The contested ballots bore, in the first or second space of the column for councilors, the surnames or names of various persons who were not candidates for councilor: Nuyda (13 ballots), Calleja (2), Montano (7), Garcia (5), Pecson (6), Osias (12), Peralta (7), Recto (4), Planas (3), Ziga (3), Perez (3, one exception noted), Carmen (5), Toribio (3), Villa (1), and Imperial (1). The trial court deemed these inscriptions to be stray votes under Section 149(13) of the Revised Election Code and not distinguishing marks that would invalidate the entire ballot. Th...(Subscriber-Only)
Issues:
- Under the Revised Election Code, are the names of persons who are not candidates appearing in the column intended for councilors stray votes that do not invalidate the whole ballot (Section 149, par. 13), or are they distinguishing marks that invalidate the entire ballot under Section 135 in rel...(Subscriber-Only)
Ruling:
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Ratio:
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Doctrine:
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