THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday aid the ongoing random manual audit (RMA) of the May 2025 national and local polls has been going smoothly and no discrepancy has been found so far.
In a media forum in Manila, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said no discrepancies were found between the votes read manually and those by the automated counting machines (ACMs).
Garcia also said that at least one million additional registered voters are expected to benefit from the forthcoming resumption of the Comelec’s voter registration period beginning in late July.
He added that they are expecting one million applicants for voter registration when they hold voter registration activities until early August.
About the counting of votes, Garcia said: “So far, we have yet to find any variance or discrepancy in the ballot boxes opened; it remains zero. Hopefully, this will continue so that we can have more proof that all the ACMs performed well,” he added.
As of Tuesday, the poll chief said 176 ballot boxes from the same number of polling precincts have undergone RMA while a total of 762 clustered precincts and two overseas voting posts will be subjected to the RMA.
Under the law, there should be a manual checking of the precinct vote count results generated by the ACMs used in the elections.
Back in the May 2022 polls, the vote counting machines (VCMs) were found to be 99.95 percent accurate in reading the official ballots.
VOTER LIST-UP
The Comelec said it is looking to resume voter registration sometime in July or August in time for the forthcoming December 2025 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
“Currently, we have 68,431,965 registered voters. We are confident that we can register around one million in that 10-day voter registration period,” said Garcia.
“That is a very conservative estimate for the 10-day voter registration period,” he added.
Garcia said the Comelec can only allot 10 days and cannot go beyond that period as the voter registration applications will still have to be assessed.
“We still have these Election Registration Board hearings, and also remove double or multiple registrants via our Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” said Garcia.
On the other hand, the Commission said the voter registration activities in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) will remain suspended to ensure that BARMM voters shall remain the same in the October 2025 Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections (BPE) as during the national and local polls.
“We don’t want to create an impression that those who will get registered in the 10 days of July to August will be able to vote in the BPE,” said Garcia.
The Comelec on Wednesday said it would wait until May 30 for the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) to make a decision on what to do with the parliamentary seats previously assigned to Sulu.
Garcia said they only have until the end of the month before moving forward with their preparations for the October 13 Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections (BPE).
“Without pressuring the parliament of Bangsamoro, we hope to have some clarity on the seven seats (from Sulu). Will they be reallocated and distributed to the remaining provinces? If not, then we won’t need to reopen the filing of Certificates of Candidacy (COC),” said Garcia.
“We only have until May 30 to wait for you because we need to finalize the list of candidates,” he added.
If the filing of COCs is necessary, the poll chief said they will have to do it by June, followed by the finalization of the list of candidates by July.
In August, he said they will need to start printing the 2.3 million official ballots, followed by their deployment in September.
Garcia said they will also need to conduct a new source code review and trusted build for the Automated Election System (AES) despite using the same ACMs used in the May 12 midterm polls.
He said this is because they will have to include the mandatory placement of candidates’ photos and political party logos as well as the “None of the Above” option in the official ballots.
“We were given merely five months to prepare. This is probably the shortest preparation period for an election,” said Garcia.
Last Tuesday, he said the Comelec met its provincial election supervisors and the regional election director of BARMM to discuss their preparations for the BPE.
The official said this is in order to ensure that the learnings from the recently-concluded midterm polls will be applied in the October 13 polls.
“In the last elections, there were some operational plans and guidelines that weren’t followed. This time, all of these will have to be followed,” said Garcia.
