More foreign election watchers arriving in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — More international observers are coming to the country to monitor the midterm elections on May 12, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced.

Aside from the European Union delegation, which met with the poll body yesterday, Japan and the United States will also send their respective contingents, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said.

Additionally, executive board members of the Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB), the world’s largest international organization of election management, are expected to arrive in the country today.

According to Garcia, A-WEB’s executive board has chosen the Philippines to hold their important meeting.

“Despite the amount of preparation, we accepted this challenge,” he said, noting that around 50 members of the executive board will be coming here to attend the meeting.

Comelec Commissioner Aimee Ferolino is currently the vice chair of A-WEB and stands to assume the position of chair for 2026 to 2028. A-WEB is composed of 119 election management bodies.

Similarly, observers from the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) will monitor the midterm elections on May 12.

The group yesterday launched an international observer mission to monitor the upcoming elections amid rising concerns over election-related incidents.

“As a global human rights coalition, we are once again deploying the IOM to support Filipinos in protecting their civil and political rights, including the right to free and honest elections,” ICHRP vice chair Patricia Lisson said in an online news briefing.

She noted that the Philippines has been a hotspot for poll-related violence, particularly in rural areas.

The ICHRP deployed more than 60 observers in the 2022 national and local elections (NLE) where they documented cases of vote buying, misinformation, red-tagging, threats and killings.

For this year, the IOM is led by a group of commissioners with long-standing records in monitoring elections. Among them are general secretary Rev. Michael Blair of the United Church of Canada; Sylvain Goldstein, Asia director for general confederation of labor and Colleen Moore of the Peace With Justice at the General Board of Church and Society.

The international mission aims to scrutinize the Philippine electoral process in response to reports of state-sponsored harassment, election-related killings and fraud.

Meanwhile, Garcia noted that the participation of foreign observers meant that they trust the country’s security.

“We will let them roam on their own so that we won’t be accused of interfering with their work,” he said.

Last March, Comelec issued guidelines requiring local and foreign nationals observing the elections this May to file for accreditation.

Only Comelec-accredited domestic and foreign observers shall be given access to government facilities and polling precincts during the elections.

Precinct Finder now out

Three weeks from election day, voters can now check the number and location of their polling precinct as Comelec yesterday made the Precinct Finder publicly accessible.

“Those with internet access, you can already check your names if your registration is still active,” Garcia said.

According to him, they are also expecting attempts to hack the Precinct Finder.

“Surely they will attempt to hack our system because Comelec has maybe the widest database among our government agencies,” Garcia explained.

In the 2022 NLE, there had been 35 million attempts to hack the Precinct Finder.

However, Garcia gave assurance that the Comelec has taken necessary steps to secure the system from hackers.

Final stretch

At the same time, Garcia reported that the machine and manual verification of the over 68 million official ballots for the coming elections is 99 percent complete, noting that only the ballots for Metro Manila are now undergoing the verification process.

The first batches of official ballots have been deployed to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, particularly Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur and the Special Geographic Area.

Official ballots bound for the province of Batanes and Caraga, Soccsksargen, Davao region, Northern Mindanao, Zamboanga Peninsula, Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Bicol region, Mimaropa and Calabarzon shall be dispatched on a day-to-day basis from the Comelec Santa Rosa warehouse.

Meanwhile, ballots for the Cordillera Administrative Region and Cagayan Valley will be deployed from April 29 to 30; those for Ilocos Region and Central Luzon from May 3 to 4; and Metro Manila from May 6 to 7.

By Friday, all Automated Counting Machines (ACMs) to be used in the coming elections should have been deployed, Comelec said.

The Comelec reported yesterday that the 93,629 ACMs and 16,371 contingency units are to be delivered in 110 technical and repair hubs. Those ACMs will later be deployed to 37,525 voting centers across the country.

The delivery of satellite communication devices for voting centers and canvassing venues is now at 80 percent, with target completion by end-April.

Meanwhile, Garcia said the Comelec is looking at a 70 percent voter turnout for the May 2025 NLE. — Emmanuel Tupas