A poll watchdog on Friday called on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to resolve poll issues first before proclaiming winners in the 2025 midterm elections.
Four days after the polls, Kontra Daya said 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," said Danilo Arao, convenor of Kontra Daya.
"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,” Arao added.
According to the poll body, winning senators could be proclaimed by Saturday, 17 May, at the earliest.
Delays in transparency servers
The election watchdog again raised concerns about the delays in data transmission to the transparency servers accessed by election watchdogs and media, versus the Comelec servers.
Comelec Chairperson George Garcia told media outlets that the data from precincts are transmitted first to the Comelec servers and then to the transparency servers 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,” Arao argued.
Data discrepancies
Another issue raised was the apparent duplication of data in one of the transparency servers.
Garcia explained this was due to “data being transmitted in repeated trenches” and noted that 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,” Arao lamented.
Kontra Daya also questioned the discrepancy between the number of voters and ballots cast, saying that “mislabeling” is a poor 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," Arao continued.
Disenfranchisement, overvoting
As of Friday, the Comelec has recorded a 19 percent 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 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, Kontra Daya noted.
As of this writing, the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections 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,” Arao furthered.
