Namfrel: 2025 polls ‘orderly but marred by disruptions’
Image from Namfrel
MANILA, Philippines — The 2025 national and local elections were “orderly but marred by disruptions,” according to poll watchdog National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections’ (Namfrel) preliminary assessment.
“The 2025 elections, we believe and it was shared with us, that there were enough safeguards to the system,” Namfrel Chairperson Angel Averia Jr. said in a press briefing at their data center at the Asia Pacific College in Makati City on Friday.
Averia specifically cited the local source code review as well as the presence of observers in testing the trusted build, the overall program governing the automated election system.
“In general, the 2025 national and local elections were peaceful and orderly,” Averia said.
Election day violence
Despite this assessment, Averia also said, “Namfrel has also noted that in some parts of the country, election day was marred by violence and other public disturbances that caused disruption and delay in the conduct of election days processes in said areas.”
The poll watchdog specifically cited a shooting in Silay, Negros Occidental; and an incident where rival political camps blocked the transport of election materials in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.
“Violence has no place in a democratic society. Namfrel encourages authorities to thoroughly investigate these incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice,” Averia added.
According to the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) latest tally, 51 incidents occurred on election day on May 12.
READ: PNP logs 20 deaths, 31 injuries in latest tally of poll-related incidents
From these 51 incidents, the police recorded five deaths and 13 injuries, the PNP added.
Counting machine woes
Averia further cited reports reaching the Namfrel about the automated counting machines (ACMs) malfunctioning due to the scanners not being clean, paper jams and overheating.
“There were reports of voters complaining that their VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) indicated an overvote for a position and thus invalidating the vote, while voters insisted that they did not overvote,” Averia added.
According to the Namfrel’s data, as of 6:06 pm on May 15, there were 35,251,161 overvotes.
However, Averia said it was already working with the Comelec to explain these overvotes.
Apart from long queues in voting centers, the watchdog also flagged a lack of ballot secrecy folders and members of the electoral board inserting the filled-out ballots instead of the voters.
However, Averia added, “Namfrel observers consider the presence of voter assistance desks, onsite volunteers providing assistance especially to members of vulnerable sectors and the decision to have early voting hours, as bright spots in the 2025 [national and local elections.]”
READ: Garcia says no delay in Comelec transmissions: It started after 7 p.m.
Further, Namfrel reiterated its concern over the delay in the reception and the double recording of election returns.
But, the delay and the double recording was due to faults on the part of the watchdog’s and other stakeholders’ servers, Comelec Chairperson George Garcia explained in a press conference last Tuesday.
Crowdsourcing
Namfrel also touted that its mobile application was able to scan 668,671 election return quick response (QR) codes from 2,787 voting precincts across the country on election day.
The watchdog was also able to scan the 49,432 QR codes from VVPAT in 10 clustered precincts each in Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, the National Capital Region, the Visayas, Mindanao and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
“Namfrel is in the process of comparing each and every QR code with the electronically transmitted results,” it added.
READ: Namfrel asks public to verify May 12 poll results using app
The poll watchdog launched its mobile application on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store a few days before election day in a bid to get the public to independently verify the election results. /jpv
