Elections watchdog National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) described the May 12 elections as “peaceful and orderly.”
However, the group noted that there were still alarming incidents of electoral violence and automated counting machine (ACM) malfunctions that caused disruptions during the election day.
As per Namfrel’s analytics dashboard, there were a total of nine election incidents verified by their volunteers.
The organization condemned the violent incidents in Lanao del Sur, Negros Occidental, and Maguindanao del Norte.
“Violence has no place in a democratic society. Namfrel encourages authorities to thoroughly investigate these incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice,” the statement said.
They also noted that the most common ACM malfunction was issues with ballots, paper jams, and slow operations of ACMs due to overheating—all of which were resolved immediately.
Namfrel also cited that post-election, the delay in the reception of election results and double-recording of election returns caused alarm.
In a press conference at the Asia-Pacific College on Friday, the group reported a total of 18,499,817 overvotes nationwide.
Most of the overvotes were observed to be for the position of senator, with 17,028,780 overvotes.
This was followed by the Sangguniang Bayan with 6,927,014 overvotes and Sangguniang Panlungsod with 4,570,164 overvotes.
Namfrel national chairperson Angel Veria Jr. stated that election overvotes were recorded as declared by returns from ACMs, and that they had no say or idea how the machines recorded or read overvotes.
“Yung source namin is the election returns na kasama diyan… So, we just added the overvote indicated in the election returns. It was the ACMs that counted and identified those overvotes,” Averia said.
(Our source is the election returns included there… So, we just added the overvote indicated in the elections. It was the ACMs that counted and identified those overvotes.)
“We don’t know how the ACMs counted the overvotes. The overvote happens when the voter shades more circles than is allowed, yung maximum, than the maximum allowed circles… We are not clear how the overvotes are counted, whether they are based on the number of marks beyond the maximum or it’s an instance of the overvote in a single ballot,” he said.—LDF, GMA Integrated News
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