Comelec chief: ‘Pre-shaded ballot’ scheme for 2025 polls is bogus

Commission on Elections Chairman George Erwin Garcia inspects the automated counting machines which will be used for the May 2025 elections. – Photo from Comelec

MANILA, Philippines — The “pre-shaded ballot” scheme for the 2025 elections is bogus and impossible to implement, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin Garcia said on Thursday.

During the inspection of the ballot verification at the Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City, Garcia said some people claimed that “secret shading” could be embedded on the ballots.

“To those who still believe in lies that there are invisible pre-shaded ballots, how can they say that the shade is invisible when all the ballots were fed into the machine to test if there were other markings?” Garcia said Filipino in an ambush interview when he was asked about the scheme.

He also said that the automated counting machines (ACMs) display “PASSED” on the screen once the ballots are verified.

He stressed that the perpetrators were saying that the ballots contained “secret markings” because they were unsuccessful in manipulating the ACMs.

“It means that you are being fooled by what they call invisible markings,” he added.

READ: Comelec warns against 2025 election ‘advanced victory’ scheme

Garcia also said that the National Printing Office, the venue for ballot printing, is safeguarded by security and election watchdogs.

Moreover, the Comelec has secret markings on the ballots, which the ACMs will check if these are precinct-specific.

Garcia also explained that during the ballot verification process, the verifiers manually reject the ballots if they have torn parts and ink smudges. If the ballot is already rejected by the verifier, it no longer has to be verified by the ACMs, and vice versa.

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He also cited a recent report by the Crime Investigation and Detection Group that three individuals posing as IT specialists related to Comelec were arrested for offering to rig the local elections in Enrile town, Cagayan in exchange for P90 million.

The Comelec chief said the suspects claimed that they can manipulate the machine and the automated election system.

“The machine cannot be manipulated because there is counter-checking. Ballots fed into the machine can be manually counted,” he said in Filipino.