A militant group of lawmakers is seeking legislative inquiry into alleged anomalies in the conduct of the May 12, 2025 midterm elections.
In House Resolution 2291, the Makabayan bloc urged Congress to look into nearly 1,600 irregularities documented by election watchdogs Kontra Daya, VoteReportPH, National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), and the Computer Professionals Union.
“The alleged anomalies include 798 cases involving issues with the Automated Counting Machines (ACMs), 200 cases of illegal campaigning, 144 cases of voter disenfranchisement, and 451 other significant election violations including non-compliance by Board of Election Inspectors, red-tagging, election-related violence and harassment, vote-buying and -selling, tampering of ballots, disinformation, among others,” the group said.
The bloc consisted of Deputy Minority Leader France Castro, Assistant Minority Leader Arlene Brosas and Kabataan party-list Rep. Raoul Manuel.
The measure also asserted that the Online Voting and Counting System (OVCS) used for overseas voting lacked a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
The omission could have violated Section 6(e) of the Automated Election System law, and disenfranched voters who could not verify their votes resulting in historically low voter turnout in some areas abroad, the Makabayan bloc said.
“Beyond technical issues and voter disenfranchisement on election day itself, there have been other election-related issues before, during, and after the elections that have marred the integrity and credibility of the election results,” the resolution read.
In addition, the lawmakers also called out the software version certified by Pro V&V, Inc. v3.4.0 version which was different from the v3.5.0 version installed on ACMs on election day, as well as the initial five million duplicate votes that affected 15,000 precincts and rankings of more than 7,600 candidates later corrected by the Comelec manually providing corrected files hours after transmission started.
The resolution proponents cited the need for a congressional inquiry into the matter to hold accountable persons or agencies proven to be complicit for disenfranchising and invalidating the votes and democratic aspirations of millions of Filipino voters.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline “Makabayan Bloc seeks inquiry on over 1,000 alleged election-related anomalies.”
