Eleksyon 2025: Comelec explains 'discrepancy' in partial vote tallies

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) explained Tuesday the alleged “discrepancy” in the partial, unofficial tally of votes for Eleksyon 2025.

In a media briefing, Comelec chairperson George Erwin Garcia said entities receiving election returns (ERs) from polling precincts, including the media, should have a software program to "clean" the data and prevent duplication of ERs.

"Hindi Comelec ang naglilinis. Wala kaming kinakailangan linisin. Wala kaming kinakailangan ayusin. Bawal kami mag-process sapagkat real-time ang results galing sa amin…. Sa media, kinakailangan 'yung nakadepende sa media server na kumukuha, kinakailangan maglinis para accurate at tumutugma sa tinatanggap ng Comelec," said Garcia.

(Comelec doesn't do the cleaning. We don't need to clean anything. We don't need to fix anything. We are not allowed to process because real-time results come from us. Those in the media who depend on and get data from the media server, cleaning should be done so the numbers are accurate and match the results received by the Comelec.)

"Sumobra, sabi ng 5 million. Sapagkat hindi nagkaroon ng sinasabing program para malinis ang nadodoble as a result of processing. Walang dagdag-bawas na nangyari. Ang pagbabasehan niyo lagi kasi… 'yung Comelec website na nilalabas namin kasi ang Comelec website walang interruption. Tuloy-tuloy na nangyayari," he added.

(They say there was an excess of 5 million votes. This happened because no program was in place to clean the duplicate data as a result of the processing. There was no vote shaving, vote padding that happened. You should always base your numbers on... the Comelec website because we don't have any interruption. Our operations are continuous.)

Early Tuesday, media outfits found that partial, unofficial results reflected from the Comelec media server showed a decrease in votes despite the continuous increase in the ERs. They discovered that transmissions sent by precincts were duplicated during consolidation in the Comelec's server.

According to a report by GMA Integrated News' Joseph Morong, an unnamed poll body official said the alleged discrepancy could be due to an aggregation tool.

There was a possibility, the official said, that the data the Comelec sent piled up.

For example, the report said, the Comelec initially sent data from 10 precincts. Then a new batch of data was sent, but the previous data from the 10 precincts was still being transmitted by the Comelec.

Meanwhile, the Comelec, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers, reconvened at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday to accept the certificates of canvass from international posts and 83 provinces in the country, which will be counted as official votes of the candidates. — VDV, GMA Integrated News

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