Comelec: 1.3 million voters overvoted in 2025 polls
Commission on Elections chairman George Erwin Garcia answers questions during a press conference at Manila Hotel’s Tent City on Friday, May 16, 2025. — Photo by Noy Morcoso/INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday that about 1.3 million out of 57 million voters overvoted in the recently concluded polls held on May 12.
“It’s 1.3 million voters who did not vote properly by voting for 13 or more senators,” Garcia said in a Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum.
Garcia made this statement after a former Comelec commissioner, Rowena Guanzon, on Monday cast doubts on the reported overvoting figures.
Seven out of the 10 senatorial candidates of former president Rodrigo Duterte who lost the senatorial elections also cited the overvote issue as one of the justifications for a manual recount of the results.
Guanzon, citing data from poll watchdog National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, said the overvote for senators reached 17,028,780 this election.
READ: 7 out of ‘DuterTEN’ want manual recount, ‘anomalies’ investigated
But Garcia explained that “the 17 million overvotes refer to the votes not given to 12 senators, whoever they are.”
Garcia also noted that in the 2022 polls, almost 900,000 voters had overvoted.
“So why did it not become a big issue in 2022?” Garcia said of overvotes. “There is overvoting in all elections — we can’t prevent that.”
Also, Garcia said fewer than a million voters overvoted on party-list groups.
“If I am not mistaken, less than one million [overvoted] in the party-list,” he said.
Voters could only select up to 12 senators as well as one party-list group.
Garcia noted that an overvote on a certain position would not affect the votes in the other positions listed in the ballots.
The 2025 midterm polls saw the highest voter turnout for midterm election in Philippine history at 82.20 percent, representing 57,350,968 out of 69,673,653 registered voters. /das
READ: It’s final: Comelec logs highest voter turnout for midterm polls
