Anti-poll fraud group Kontra Daya asked the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to ensure electoral integrity and transparency by allowing manual counting of votes.
In its petition to the poll body one month before election day, Kontra Daya said the poll body must implement urgent measures to prevent electoral fraud.
“The 2025 elections remain prone to fraud because of the untransparent and undemocratic automated system, where voters have no direct participation in the counting and transmission of their votes,” said Kontra Daya convenor Danilo Arao and one of the lead petitioners.
The petitioners outlined nine action steps that the COMELEC may implement on May 12, the day of national and local elections in the country.
Their proposals include pre-election practices such as making the source code of the Miru AES (automated election system) publicly available, as well as improvements in election day protocols.
“To decrease the chance of widespread electoral fraud and increase the participation of voters, measures such as manual counting of ballots before transmission, no internet connection prior to transmission, and public access to transmission logs are necessary,” Arao said.
Ian Aragoza, spokesperson of the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU) and co-lead petitioner, stressed the importance of manual vote counting: “Because the source code is not available to the public, we don’t know how the machines count and transmit our votes.”
“In the current system, votes are transmitted to the designated servers before electronic verification is done—a blatant design for fraud using the current automated system,” Aragoza said.
The petition reads, “It is not enough that these demands are recognized and verbally addressed; they should be codified in a resolution and included in the training of poll workers and members of the Electoral Board.”
Amending election laws
In response to the petition, COMELEC chairperson Jorge Erwin Garcia said he is personally in favor of hybrid counting of votes.
At the ongoing “Midyang Responsible, Mapanuring Botante” forum by the Philippine Press Institute in Quezon City, Garcia said: “I support hybrid counting, but the present legal regime (regulating elections) does not.”
Garcia encouraged concerned groups to ask Congress to amend election laws such as Republic Act 9369 (Automated Elections Law) to allow reforms in the conduct of polls.
He added that honoraria for election inspectors must also be increased to compensate for their increased workload with hybrid counting of votes. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
