Comelec: No manual uploading of SD cards for 2025 polls

Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting National Coordinator Arwin Serrano (left) and Commisison on Elections Chairman George Erwin Garcia oversee the stress testing of automated counting machines for the 2025 midterm elections on Wednesday, November 13, 2024. (INQUIRER.net/John Eric Mendoza)

LAGUNA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections will no longer allow manual uploading of Secure Digital or SD cards to transmit results in the upcoming 2025 midterm elections, Comelec Chairman  George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday.

Comelec also  announced the usage of satellite internet constellation Starlink to transmit election returns for the first time.

Election facilitators in the past were compelled to resort to manual uploading of election returns when problems with internet connectivity arise.

They used to transport SD cards and then bring them to a nearby canvasing area where Consolidation Canvassing System (CCS) machines are located. 

The CCS conducts the automated tallying and monitoring of data received from polling precincts and lower levels of the Board of Canvassers.

At the same time, SD cards were made to store the encrypted image of the ballots fed inside the vote counting machines or VCM which refers to the older system used in previous elections.

“But what if they have to use horses and boats [to bring SD cards] or when their village is so isolated? There will be a delay,” Garcia said in a press briefing here at Comelec’s warehouse in Biñan, Laguna after the conduct of acceptance test and “stress testing” of automated counting machines (ACM) for the 2025 midterm elections.

“Now, we will no longer have manual uploading.”

Instead, Garcia said election facilitators will be required to bring the entire ACMs to the canvassing centers.

“No more SD cards will have to be obtained, no more manual uploading to the CCS, to remove human intervention,” he said, partly in Filipino.