Comelec eyes finishing official vote tally for 2025 polls on May 15

Commission on Elections Chair George Garcia – Photo from INQUIRER files

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) targets to finish the canvassing of votes for the 2025 elections on May 15, Thursday.

If successful, finishing the official vote tally three days after the May 12 polls would be historic since it would be the fastest in history, Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday at a press conference in Manila Hotel Tent City, where the canvassing has been taking place.

“It appears to be,” Garcia said when asked if it would be a historic first for Comelec once it fulfills its target of finishing the canvass by Thursday.

Garcia noted that in previous automated elections, it could take around two weeks for the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) to tally all of the certificates of canvass (COCs), while the canvassing of COCs used to take more than a month when the country was still conducting manual elections.

Comelec: 1st day of canvassing already historic

On the first day of canvassing, the NBOC tallied 58 out of 175 COC,s according to Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco.

“This proves to be the [largest] number of COCs canvassed by the NBOC on the first day of national canvassing in the history of Philippine elections,” Laudiangco said in a statement.

“Before, back when I was still in practice, there were days when nothing was canvassed because no COCs had arrived yet,” said Garcia, a veteran election lawyer.

To sustain the tallying momentum, Garcia said the NBOC targets to finish 100 COCs by Wednesday.

READ: Partial, official poll results expected as canvassing resumes

“For this day (Wednesday), hopefully we could canvas 100 COCs—that would be 158 already,” he said of the target finished COCs for Tuesday and Wednesday. “If we finished 100 COCs today, that would be really historic.”

When the NBOC canvasses a COC, it becomes part of the partial and official count, which will be used to determine winners in the senatorial and party-list races.

Of the 175 COCs, 82 are from the provinces, 64 for overseas absentee voting, 26 from highly urbanized cities, two from the district board of canvassers, and one from the local absentee voting./mcm