Senator Manuel “Mar” Roxas II is set to file before Friday his protest, contesting Vice President Jejomar Binay’s victory in the May 10 elections.

Lawyer Joey Tenefrancia, who represents Roxas, said documents for the electoral protest are “almost done” and once his client approves, the protest will be filed before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) on Wednesday or Thursday.

“The legal team will be meeting on Monday (July 5) to finalize the case documents and pleadings. Once we’re done, we will be submitting it to Senator Roxas’s staff for approval. Hopefully by Tuesday, we will just be reviewing the documents to ensure that it is flawless before we file it either on Wednesday or Thursday,” Tenefrancia said.

He said the case “Roxas vs. Binay” has underwent numerous revisions and included new arguments that could prove that disregarding the nullified ballots in the official canvassing of votes was detrimental in determining who actually won the people’s mandate.

It will be recalled that Roxas’s camp urged Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC) for the presidential and vice presidential count, to perform a manual count after some 2.6 million votes were considered nullified nationwide.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) denied Roxas’s pleadings even if Binay won by only more than 700,000 in the tight vice presidential race.

Binay received 14,645,574 votes, while Roxas got 13,918,490 votes.

Ballots are considered nullified and are not read by precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines if they are incorrectly shaded.

Undervoting (ballots were incompletely shaded) and overvoting (ballots were shaded in excess of the votes allowed for one position) also invalidates a ballot.

Some 500,000 null votes were recorded at Roxas’s claimed bailiwick in Regions 6, 7, and 8.

“The issue on the null votes remains as the major basis for the complaint but it will be regarded as one of the many consequences of the automated election system (AES), which we wanted to be reviewed and examined,” Tenefrancia said.

He clarified that Roxas is not against the conduct of AES in the future election but said only a manual count will erase the doubt and add credibility on result of past automated election.

“A manual recount of the votes for the vice presidential race is one of the things we will ask,” he said, refusing to discuss details of the case further.