April 25, 2025

Numerous overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have raised concerns and expressed doubts about COMELEC’s ongoing online voting system, which began on April 13 and will run until May 12, 2025. One of their main complaints is the absence of a process that allows voters to see and verify the results of their individual votes. This has led to widespread skepticism regarding the integrity and transparency of COMELEC’s Online Voting and Canvassing System (OVCS).According to COMELEC, voters using the online system will not receive any form of physical receipt or even an electronic file to confirm their vote. Not even on the computer screen will they see a verified summary of their cast vote. COMELEC has stated that this is an intentional design feature of the OVCS to supposedly uphold the “sanctity of the ballot.”The only thing overseas voters receive is a Ballot ID with a QR code. However, when this is accessed, it only displays a plain text hash—an encrypted machine language string that ordinary voters cannot interpret or verify.COMELEC claims that voters will only know if their votes were recorded and counted after the voting period ends on May 12, 2025. Only through the automated canvassing process will the content linked to each Ballot ID be revealed. And even then, there is no guarantee that the ballots of online voters will be reviewed or validated during the canvassing process.Because online voters are not provided with a readable and verifiable receipt, there is no certainty that their vote was properly recorded or counted. This is even more concerning than the offline Automated Counting Machines (ACMs), which at least provide a VVPAT (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail)—a printed summary of the voter’s selections.It’s worth noting that on March 8, 2016, the Supreme Court ordered COMELEC to activate the VVPAT feature in vote-counting machines. This decision came after a petition filed by Senator Richard Gordon and the Bagumbayan-VNP Movement, which argued that COMELEC’s refusal to implement the VVPAT in previous elections violated Republic Act No. 9369, the Automated Elections System (AES) Law.COMELEC’s current online voting system directly contradicts the government’s own electoral law. The OVCS fosters deeper mistrust among overseas Filipino workers, adding to the already problematic state of the Philippines’ automated election system. This reflects the persistent lack of transparency and integrity in the electoral process and raises serious concerns about the potential for larger-scale fraud in the upcoming May 2025 national elections. Kontra Daya reiterates its demand that voters be given a clear, readable, and verifiable electronic receipt that shows exactly who they voted for. Most importantly, we call for a manual count of votes at the precinct level. Only then can we begin to restore public trust and participation in the country’s deeply flawed and non-transparent automated election system.