Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Chair George Erwin Garcia dismissed claims of “dagdag-bawas” or vote tampering in the 2025 midterm elections, following a drastic plummet in vote counts reported from the evening of May 12 to May 13.
In a report by RH 29 Boy Gonzales, the programs used by entities apart from the poll body—including the media—were not “cleaned” or reset, resulting in duplicated precinct-level vote counts, according to Garcia, during a press conference at the Manila Hotel Tuesday morning.
Garcia explained that while the COMELEC released election returns in real time, they did not provide any official candidate rankings.
“Ang makikita niyo sa COMELEC real-time, hindi siya late ang result ng mga election returns sa bawat presinto. ‘Yung mga lumalabas na may sumatutal, may ranking ng mga kandidato—hindi sa amin galing ‘yun. ‘Yung sa NAMFREL, PPCRV, media, minority, majority, hindi siya real-time kaagad kasi kinakailangan iproseso kasi pag inilagay ‘yung data, ang tawag diyan, machine readable, so kinakailangang iproseso,” he explained.
(What you will see in the COMELEC site is in real-time, the election returns from each precinct are not late. Those showing total counts and candidate rankings—those did not come from us. Results from NAMFREL, PPCRV, the media, minority, and majority groups, are not real-time and instantaneous because they have to process the data, which are initially only machine-readable.)
The poll body chair explained that election returns were released to promote transparency and ensure the public’s immediate access to information. He added that the returns transmitted from each precinct are automatically converted into human-readable data.
Garcia also mentioned that he had requested organizations releasing partial and unofficial results to review and clear their systems to avoid any duplication of data.
