ESTEBAN M. CORPUZ, PROTESTANT AND APPELLANT, VS. ISIDORO B. IBAY, PROTESTEE AND APPELEE.

In the general elections held on November 11, 1947, five
candidates were voted for the office of municipal mayor of Villasis, Pangasinan.
Mr. Isidoro B. Ibay was proclaimed by the municipal board of canvassers
mayor-elect with 1,332 votes. His closest rival, Mr. Esteban M. Corpuz, who
according to the said board of canvassers obtained 1,328 votes, filed a motion
of protest in due time. The other three candidates did not participate in the
protest.

After a revision of the ballots cast in the precincts mentioned
in the protest and counterprotest, His Honor Judge Eulogio F. de Guzman found
that the protestant Esteban M. Corpuz obtained 1,331 votes and the protestee
Isidoro B. Ibay, 1,333 votes, and proclaimed the latter duly elected with a
plurality of 2 votes. The protestant appealed.

In his assignmentsof error the protestant-appellant questions
the correctness of the trial court’s appreciation of 16 ballots in favor of the
protestee-appellee, while the latter in his counterassignments of error in turn
impugns the trial court’s appreciation of 8 ballots in favor of the
protestant-appellant.

After a joint examination by the members of the Court of each
of the contested ballots in relation to the assignment of error, the Court
unanimously rejected ballots I-26 and I-33 as marked ballots, the first with “(2
potoc” written after the name of the second councilor voted for, and the second
with the word “comconpiling” written at the foot of the ballot below the name of
the eighth councilor voted for. These words are patently irrelevant or
impertinent and appear to have been written for no other purpose than to
identify the votes, and should have been rejected by the trial court. (Lucero
vs. De Guzman, 45 Phil., 852, 854.)

The Court is unanimous in affirming the appreciation by the
trial court of the following 12 ballots in favor of the protestee:

I-6—The name written for mayor, as the Court reads it, is
“Mayor—Isidoi iBoy”; I-8—”Tuduro Ybai”; 1-9—”Teodoro Ibay”; I-29—”teodoro Ebai”;
I-55—”Tiodoro Ebay”; I-66—”Teodoro Ibay”; I-31—”Isidao B Ibay”; I-32—”Isidoro
ipai”; I-35—”Sidoro Biay”; I-36—”isidara bay”; I-42—Esedoro Eyava”; and I-67—”I.
sidoro.”

The Court believes that although in these contested ballots the
voters exhibited lack of skill in calligraphy their intention to vote for the
protestee Isidoro B. Ibay was sufficiently manifest to justify the trial court’s
appreciation of said votes in his favor. The Christian name Teodoro, Tudoro, or
Tiodoro, followed by the surname Ibay, is sufficiently close or similar to the
name Isidoro Ibay to justify the reading of the votes in favor of the appellee,
there being no candidate named Teodoro.

The appellant also contends that I-49 is a marked ballot, and
should have been rejected by the trial court, because the words “N Rapisa”
appear on the first line provided for a member of the provincial board. It is
alleged that N. Rapisa corresponds to the name of former Assemblyman Nicomedes
T. Rupisan, who was twice elected Member of the National Assembly representing
the fourth district of Pangasinan, of which the town of Villasis forms part.
Appellant cites as authority the case of Raymundo vs.. De Ungria, G.R. No.
43044, July 18, 1935, in which it was held:

“It is now a uniform rule in this jurisdiction that ballots
with the names of conspicuous politicians or personages voted for offices for
which they are not candidates and are not eligible for being nonresidents should
invariably be considered as marked and void.”

In the first place, it is not clear that the name N. Rapisa
corresponds to that of a conspicuous personage. In the second place, even
assuming that that name was intended, for former Assemblyman Nicomedes T.
Rupisan, yet the latter was a resident of Pangasinan and could have been voted
member of the provincial board of that province. Hence the case cited does not
apply.

In his last assignment of error the appellant questions the
validity of one vote cast in Clark Field, Pampanga, in favor of the appellee,
telegraphic advice of which was received by the municipal treasurer of Villasis
from Clark Field, Pampanga, on November 15, 1947, one day after the municipal
board of canvassers had met and proclaimed the elected candidates. Said vote
appears to have been cast under the provisions of section 17 of the Revised
Election Code, which reads as follows:

“SEC. 17. Voting in Bases and Reservations.—On the day
of voting said voters shall vote in the place or places designated at the base
or reservation by the Commission on Elections and before the representative or
representatives of said Commission, for which purpose said representative or
representatives shall be in the said place or places at seven o’clock in the
morning of that day to receive the votes of the voters, and, at six o’clock in
the afternoon or as soon as the voters have finished voting, shall make a
canvass and prepare a statement of the result thereof, transmitting such result
by telegraph immediately after the canvass, to the municipal treasurer concerned
and to the Commission on Elections, so that it may be included in the final
computation of the votes and at the same time the said representative or
representatives shall send to said officers certified copies of the statement by
rush and registered mail.”

Appellant contends that the consideration of said vote devolved
upon the municipal board of canvassers, “who had the ministerial duty to do it,”
and that the lower court had no jurisdiction to take cognizance of said vote. In
other words, according to counsel for appellant, the protEstee should have first
instituted an action of mandamus against the municipal board of canvassers for
the purpose of compelling the latter to include said vote in its canvass. There
is no question that said vote was properly cast in accordance with law, as shown
by the certificate Exhibit Y. The delay in giving immediate advice of said vote
as required by section 17 was neither the fault of the voter nor the fault of
the candidate voted for. The trial court held that once an election contest was
properly filed, the court had Jurisdiction to try and pass upon all questions
involved in said contest; that under the new election law it had jurisdiction to
proclaim the winning candidate without the need of another canvass by the board
of canvassers, it being guided only by the outcome of its findings. We sustain
this ruling of the trial court as being in accordance with law.

It results from the foregoing consideration of appellant’s
assignments of error that only 2 of the 16 votes for the appellee which the said
appellant impugns by his appeal should be rejected and deducted from appellee’s
total number of votes, thereby reducing it from 1,333 to 1,331. That would give
him the same number of votes as that for the appellant, unless appellee’s
counterassignments of error, or at least one of them, should prosper. We shall
now direct our attention to these counterassignments of error.

The Court is unanimous in the opinion that the first, second,
third, and fifth counterassignments of error, referring to ballots E-1, E-17,
E-31, E-2, E-13, and E-34, are devoid of merit.

The Court is likewise unanimously of the opinion that the
fourth counterassignment of error is meritorious. This refers to ballots E-18
and E-19, both of which were cast for “Isidoro Corpus” and claimed by both
appellant Esteban M. Corpus and appellee Isidoro B. Ibay but awarded to the
former by the trial court under paragraph 1 of section 149 of the Revised
Election Code. The statutory rule invoked by the trial court reads as
follows:

“1. Any ballot where only the Christian name of candidate or
only his surname appears is valid for such candidate, if there is no other
candidate with the same name or surname for the same office; but when the word
written in the ballot is at the same time the Christian name of a candidate and
the surname of his opponent, the vote shall be counted in favor of the
latter.”

Note that the last ciuse of the above-quoted rule refers to one
word which is at the same time the Christian name of the candidate and the
surname of his opponent, in which case the vote shall be counted in favor of the
candidate whose surname corresponds to the word in question. For instance, let
us suppose that the names of the candidates for the same office are Luis
Francisco and Francisco Hernandez. Should the voter write only the word
“Francisco” the rule in question says that it should be counted in favor of Luis
Francisco and not in that of Francisco Hernandez. .Hiat rule has no application
to the case at hand, wherein the voter used two words, one corresponding to the
Christian name of one candidate and the other to the surname of his opponent. In
such a case the vote is invalid for either candidate because there is no way of
determining the real intention of the voter.

It results, therefore, that these two votes E-18 and E-19
counted by the trial court in favor of the protestant-appellant should be
deducted from the latter’s total number of votes, thereby reducing it from 1,331
to 1,329, against appellee’s total of 1,331 as hereinabove reduced.

The result is that the protestee-appellee’s proclamation by the
trial court as the duly elected municipal mayor of Villasis, Pangasinan, with a
plurality of 2 votes must be, as it is hereby, affirmed, with costs against the
appellant.

Moran, C.J., Paras, Bengzon, Tuason, Montemayor, and
Reyes, JJ., concur.