STATEMENT
May 16, 2025
The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) urges the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to heed the call for manual vote counting of the results of the 2025 Elections, as a staggering number of anomalies have been reported.
As of May 13, information released by VoteReportPH and citizen-led watchdogs showed that errors in Automated Counting Machines (ACMs) accounted for almost 50 percent of reported election violations. These include technical issues from malfunctioning machines that resulted in delays in recording and transmitting votes. Many voters also complained of “overvoting,” especially as they were sure that they shaded correctly. Several groups and candidates have thus called for manual counting of the votes. This is not the first time that the COMELEC has been called out for the dubious irregularities of the ACM.
In the 2010, 2013, and 2016 elections, ACM provider Smartmatic was also called out by experts and groups for failing to meet several points of compliance under R.A. 8436 or the Election Automation Law of 2007, including accuracy level, unsatisfactory implementation of source code review, non-compliance with digital signature requirements, and unsecured communication ports, among others. However, despite blatant failures and shortcomings, Smartmatic was still allowed to participate in the elections up until 2022 and was only disqualified by COMELEC for the 2025 elections, citing an alleged bribery scheme in 2016. Miru Systems, on the other hand, was not any better, with a track record of problems such as delays, voter confusion, and several other issues in countries like Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Iraq, 70 percent of voting stations faced issues with Miru’s devices, which led to a manual vote count.
In a recent hearing of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, Miru was also criticized for presenting a prototype for COMELEC’s evaluation, a violation of R.A. 9369 that amended the Election Automation Law of 2007. The model used by Miru during the post-qualification evaluation was custom-manufactured and had not been used before, even in other countries.
The Philippines is not the only one experiencing problems with the automated elections, as several countries like Germany, the US, Ireland, and the Netherlands cited transparency, cost, and public dissatisfaction concerns with automated elections. They eventually reverted back to manual elections.
Given thus, the call for manual counting is not only an issue of technicalities but a call for the COMELEC to be transparent and accountable according to the law. Section 31 of R.A. 9369 explicitly states that the vote counting must be done in a public manner, wherein the public can see the chairman reading the ballots, the election return being filled out by the poll clerk, and a tally board being marked by a third member.
COMELEC cannot sacrifice reliability for speed and must heed the demand of the public for a transparent, reliable, and manual manner of vote counting. COMELEC must be held accountable for failing to protect the votes of the Filipino people and for the persistent irregularities and anomalies every election since AES was implemented.
CPDG calls on fellow CSOs to defend the sanctity of the vote and stand for accountability and transparency in the elections. Manually count the votes of the Filipino people, now!