May 16, 2025
Days after the midterm elections, Kontra Daya says the Comelec shouldn’t rush into proclaiming winning candidates as there’s a long list of issues that need to be resolved.
“The success of the election shouldn’t only depend on the speed of canvassing and proclamation. If the Comelec really cares about safeguarding and respecting the vote of the electorate, then they should address the issues and inconsistencies of the recent election,” said Dr. Danilo Arao, convenor of Kontra Daya.
Delays in the transparency servers
The election watchdog again questions the delays in data transmission to the transparency servers accessed by election watchdogs and media, versus the Comelec servers.
Garcia told media outlets that the data from precincts are transmitted to the Comelec servers, and to the transparency servers. The latter receives data in batches.
“Shouldn’t the Comelec have set it up so that the data is transmitted to servers (Comelec and transparency) simultaneously? The purpose of having transparency servers is to act as a check and balance of the data, not just a duplicate. The Comelec should explain this process further,” said Arao.
Data discrepancies
Another issue raised in the past few days of canvassing was the apparent duplication of data in one of the transparency servers. Garcia says this was due to “data being transmitted in repeated trenches” and these still need to be “cleaned by the appropriate program.”
“Garcia’s answer doesn’t really explain the root of the duplication problem. Aside from giving us a more detailed explanation, they should show us the transmission logs,” he added.
Kontra Daya also questions the discrepancy in the number of voters versus the ballots casted, saying that “mislabeling” is a sorry excuse from the Comelec.
“These kinds of mistakes are unacceptable and such blunders shouldn’t happen if the Comelec was really prepared for the elections as they claimed.”
Disenfranchisement and Overvoting
As of today, COMELEC has recorded a 19% voter turnout in overseas voting — only around 232,000 overseas Filipinos cast their votes out of the expected 1.22 million. Overseas Filipinos had previously raised concerns about the lack of information dissemination regarding the shift from manual to online voting, as well as technical difficulties encountered during both the pre-enrollment process and actual voting.
An alarming spike in overvotes has also emerged as one of the most pressing problems in the 2025 midterm elections. As of this writing, NAMFREL reports around 18.5 million overvotes.
“These are serious problems that shouldn’t be swept under the rug. These have caused the disenfranchisement of millions of votes, and consequently the future of our country,” said Arao.