Leading poll bets top campaign violators – watchdog

MANILA, Philippines — Leading candidates in the May midterm elections are also the leading campaign violators, according to poll watchdog Vote Report PH.

Based on its initial report, Vote Report PH has recorded a total of 94 illegal campaign incidents as of March 14.

Out of the total campaign violations, more than half or 64 percent involved red-tagging.

“Some reports of red-tagging have been observed to be results of the use of deepfakes to spread disinformation,” the group disclosed. It further noted that usual victims of red-tagging are progressive senatorial and/or party-list groups.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia said they will look into the report of Vote Report PH and compare it with their records.

“We are one with them and will hold responsible violators of campaign rules,” Garcia replied when asked for comment on the report.

Illegal campaigning accounted for 25 percent of the recorded violations, while four percent involved vote-buying and three percent illegal use of public resources.

“Most violations of illegal campaigning observed (were) from candidates leading formal and informal surveys,” Vote Report noted.

Ballot deployment

The deployment of official ballots for the midterm polls is set to start by the second week of April, the Comelec said.

“There’s already an operation plan set up for the deployment,” Garcia said in a press conference after completing ballot printing on Saturday.

Garcia said the first batch to be deployed are the ballots for Caraga and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

He noted that the first batch to be printed and deployed are those ballots allotted to be used in the farthest regions in the country.

“A number of election paraphernalia are already there, other non-accountable forms and other materials,” the poll chief added.

Since official ballots are accountable documents, Garcia said these are the last to be shipped out.

Aside from ballots, automated counting machines and Starlink for the transmission of results are yet to be deployed.

The National Printing Office and Miru Systems completed the printing of the 68,542,564 official ballots to be used in the midterm elections last Saturday.

Garcia said the printing of ballots was completed in 48 days despite a slight delay because the Comelec had to comply with the Supreme Court order for the inclusion of one senatorial candidate.

With the completion of ballot printing, the Comelec will shift its focus on the verification of ballots. About half of the total official ballots have already undergone machine and manual verification.

The Comelec hopes to complete the verification of ballots by April 20 to 21.