Invalidated ballots, faulty ACMs among issues flagged by IOM
Wheelchair-bound voters wait in line at a polling station’s priority section during mid-term elections in Manila on May 12, 2025. Millions of Filipinos headed to the polls May 12 in a mid-term election widely seen as a referendum on the explosive feud between President Ferdinand Marcos and impeached Vice President Sara Duterte. —Photo by Jam Sta Rosa/Agence France-Presse
MANILA, Philippines — A group of international observers on Tuesday said that reports of machine glitches, technical issues and violence that transpired in the 2025 midterm elections led to disenfranchisement of voters.
International Observer Mission (IOM), a group of human rights advocates across the world deployed in the country, flagged issues such as malfunctioning automated counting machines (ACMs), reports of invalidated ballots due to alleged overvoting, and unexplained software.
“Our rights-based methodology has revealed violations of civil and political rights, including the right to vote, occurring on and around election day. Our mission is to document and to amplify what the Filipino people are already bravely calling out.” said IOM Commissioner Lee Rhiannon, a former Australian senator.
The IOM said that the group, along with local partners Vote Report PH and Kontra Daya documented verified issues of election irregularities by interviewing voters in respective areas.
READ: ACM glitches, ‘overvoting’ top Election Day woes
The IOM said that the teams monitored vote-buying before and during voting hours. It also raised reports that ballots were placed inside a cardboard box, instead of the voters personally feeding them into the ACMs.
“This case was documented by foreign observers, where respondents expressed concerns about whether their votes were counted and if any tampering occurred. In some precincts in Zamboanga, voters complained of not seeing the name of the partylist they voted for in the receipts,” the IOM said.
Aside from this, the IOM said that it will recommend a probe into the ACM running version 2.5.0 software, instead of the certified version 3.4.0. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier said that the source code of the ACMs is “duly audited” and it matches with the hash code it uses in the final trusted build audited by an international certification entity.
The Comelec also said that the 3.4 version in the local source code review is the same version the independent third-party audit tested and it was named as the version 3.5 after it passed the test.
Meanwhile, the IOM pointed out the “disturbing pattern” of election-related violence and human rights violations such as election-day riots, armed attacks, and multiple fatalities on election day.
“We’ve observed a disturbing pattern: escalating violence, red-tagging of candidates and supporters, and coordinated disinformation against progressive voices,” said IOM Commissioner Colleen Moore.
READ: PDP Laban, Makabayan cite ‘irregularities’ in polls
Moore added that the incidents are not isolated incidents, and created a “chilling atmosphere that compromises the safety and freedom of voters.”
The IOM cited Vote Report PH’s report of 1,445 incidents of red-tagging, with cases spanning throughout the campaign period in Cordillera Administrative Region, Southern Luzon, Negros, and Mindanao.
It noted that the “attacks intensified on election day, with red-tagging flyers and posters targeting progressive candidates and partylists still being circulated.”
The group said that the final report of its election observation will be released within two weeks. /cb
