Editor’s Note: This page was updated to reflect the set-up for the 2025 elections.
Follow Rappler’s coverage of the 2025 Philippine elections and access partial, unofficial real-time election results from the Comelec Media Server through our elections site. Report any rules violations and false claims related to the elections through the voter hotline chat on Rappler Communities.
MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has held automated elections in the Philippines since 2010. Compared to manual elections of years past, voters get an idea much earlier of who the country’s next leaders will be, because the vote counts are transmitted electronically immediately after polling precincts close.
However, the automated polls are not without flaws. Over the years, the conduct of elections has been criticized. The Comelec then responded with tweaks and fixes in the system, in an effort to make the system more reliable and transparent.
The automated election system (AES) has the following key components: the Electronic Management System (EMS), the counting machines, and the Canvassing and Consolidation System.
For the 2025 elections, the Comelec introduced an additional component: the online voting system for Filipinos overseas.
Election management system
At the core of the AES is the Election Management System (EMS), which manages all information needed to manage each election event:
- the project of precincts, which includes information on geographical subdivisions, voting jurisdictions involved in a particular election event, as well as the number of registered voters in each voting jurisdictions;
- the electoral contests that voters will be voting in, in each jurisdiction;
- the candidates vying for each of those contests;
- information on the members of the electoral boards (formerly known as Board of Election Inspectors) — the personnel who will be staffing each precinct.
These information are used to generate or program various requirements for the elections which are unique to each precinct, including:
- Ballot design and ballot faces, which reflect candidates that voters in a precinct will vote for;
- Configuration files of the counting machines that will be assigned to each precinct
The EMS basically configures the software and other components of the system for the particular needs of an election event in each specific area.
The counting machines
The counting machines used to tally votes at the precinct level are the component of the automated election system that voters are most familiar with. These machines are deployed in clustered precincts nationwide and in select overseas posts.
Each clustered precinct is generally made up of established precincts grouped together to meet the assigned maximum number of voters per VCM.
There have been various changes to the machines used at the precinct level since the first automated elections were conducted in the country. During the special elections for officials of the then-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), two types of machines were used — a typescreen version and another that made use of paper ballots.
Since the first two nationwide automated elections (2010 and 2013), the Comelec used what were known as precinct count optical scanners (PCOS), later renamed vote counting machines (VCMs). These machines used paper ballots.
The machines that will be used in the 2025 midterm elections are known as automated counting machines (ACMs). They will also use paper ballots.
On election day, voters feed their ballots into the counting machine, which then counts the circles that voters shaded to vote for their preferred national and local candidates. The machines then print a voter receipt, so that the voter can verify if the machine read their ballot properly.
Also known as the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), voter receipts were first deployed in the 2016 elections after much legal controversy.
To protect ballot secrecy and prevent use of these voter receipts for vote-buying, the voters are not allowed to take these receipts outside the polling precincts. Instead, these are surrendered to poll officers after the voter’s quick verification.
In previous versions of these counting machines, the configuration files, as well as all data captured and generated by the machine for the duration of the voting period, were saved on SD cards.
The ACMs that will be used in the 2025 mid-term elections will have their configuration files saved in USB thumbdrives that are plugged into the machine. There is also a secondary flash disk whose function is to back up the data in each machine (including ballot images, the logs, and the votes counted).
The data captured and saved for each precinct include the actual votes cast, the system logs, as well as the digital images of all scanned ballots. These are stored by the machines in encrypted format.
Physical ballots go directly into the ballot boxes below the machine.
In previous elections, members of electoral boards assigned to each precinct were issued iButtons which they used whenever they needed to do anything with the machine, such as initializing it, printing, transmitting, or ending the voting period. In the 2025 elections, the iButtons have been replaced with smart cards. The smart cards are used to authenticate and register the identity of the electoral board members who initiated each action.
The number of clustered precincts and their corresponding counting machines deployed by the Comelec across elections have varied over the years. On May 12, 2025, there were over 93,000 clustered precincts.
There were only around 86,000 clustered precincts in 2019, over 92,000 in 2016, nearly 78,000 in 2013, and around 74,000 in 2010. In the 2022 presidential elections, there were over 107,000 clustered precincts.
Transmission, canvassing of votes
When polls close on election day, the counting machines transmit the vote counts — also known as election returns or ERs — to the different servers and canvassing centers in the AES.
The counting machines and the canvassing systems are equipped with modems that enable them to transmit and receive ERs. A transmission service handles the actual transmission of votes.
The main channel is through public telecommunications networks, with transmission via satellite as back-up. For the 2025 elections, the Comelec’s vendor will be using Starlink satellite internet devices in areas where mobile internet connections are weak.
Consolidation/canvassing systems (CCS) in various canvassing areas then process ERs received. A software used by the CCS then reads incoming data and canvasses the votes.
In previous elections, the counting machines transmitted ERs to three locations: the city or municipal board of canvassers (MBOC), which canvasses votes for local elections; the Comelec’s central server; and the transparency server, which receives election results shared with watchdog groups, political parties, and accredited media groups.
There were also back-up servers, which were supposed to kick in if the central and transparency servers failed.
In 2025, the Comelec increased the number of servers that will receive ERs directly from the voting machines. Each of the four mandated groups will now have their own dedicated servers.
These groups are: two civil society groups that act as the Comelec’s citizen’s arm (the Parish Pastoral for Responsible Voting or PPCRV and the National Movement for Free Elections or Namfrel), the dominant majority party and the dominant minority party.
Media groups access through a fifth server: the Comelec Media Server. Tabulation of votes received by the various transparency servers, however, are considered partial and unofficial. Rappler’s election site, accessible through: ph.rappler.com/ will also be publishing partial and unofficial results from the Comelec Media Server as soon as it starts receiving election results from the counting machines.
The official canvassing of votes is done in a ladderized manner: first, the machines transmit directly through the canvassing machines used by the City or Municipal Board of Canvassers.
Certificates of Canvass at the municipal and component city levels are then transmitted to the provincial board of canvassers (PBOC). The PBOCs then collate official results for the province and transmit to the national board of canvassers (NBOC), where the results for national positions are canvassed. The MBOC and PBOC also separately beam ERs to the central server.
During the official canvassing process, lawyers representing candidates may raise pre-proclamation controversies to challenge irregularities in the canvassing of votes and other proceedings related to the proclamation of winners in elections.
In 2013, results from provinces in the ARMM were likewise transmitted to the ARMM regional board of canvassers — where results for ARMM governor, vice governor, and assemblymen are tallied — before being transmitted to the central server.
For presidential and vice presidential polls like in 2016 and 2022, a separate server was installed in Congress, where members of the Senate and the House of Representatives convened as the NBOC for the purpose of canvassing votes and proclaiming the winning president and vice president.
The Comelec En Banc acts as the NBOC for the senatorial and partylist elections.
The Comelec automatically publishes electronically-transmitted precinct-level election results on its website but these results are unofficial and not tabulated. The tabulated results that are later published on the Comelec website are based on the official results as reflected on the certificates of canvass.
Security features, backups
The Philippine AES has various redundant security features. One key security feature is the fact that ballots and other component parts of the machines are all specific down to the clustered precinct level. To initiate various actions during the voting process, each of the three members of the precinct electoral board need to use their respective cards.
The system allows for multiple opportunities for audit. All software used by the system goes through a code review process where both the political parties and watchdog groups can participate in.
Each elections, digital media storage devices containing copies of the final trusted build source codes are turned over by the Comelec to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, which holds them in escrow to serve as reference.
The Comelec publishes hashcodes for various builds on the Source Code Hash Manifest page of its website.
The authenticity of each software build version is verifiable through the hash generated when the build has been finalized. Any changes to the software will result in a change in the hash. This was demonstrated before by the Comelec in the 2016 elections when a human error involving a correction to character Ñ resulted in a hash error.
The machines log all actions done during the voting period. Before the machines transmit, they generate nine copies of the election results. For the past six automated elections, the volunteers of the PPCRV have been collecting and encoding these printouts for the purpose of comparing them with the results transmitted to the Comelec’s main server and the transparency servers.
Individual machines which transmitted the ERs are traceable through IP address, clustered precinct ID, and MAC address.
The number of backups were further increased for the 2025 elections. The Comelec itself has engaged three data centers in various locations for the purpose of ensuring that backups will be available in case one server fails. There are two data centers in Makati City. Data Center 1, which hosts the Comelec Central Server, is at the PLDT’s Vitro Data Center. Data Center 3, which hosts the servers for the various transparency servers for the unofficial count is at the Circuit Corporate Center Building in the same city. Meanwhile, Data Center 2, which hosts the main backup server, is located in Sucat, Parañaque.
In addition to this, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) also hosts a server that mirrors data from the central server.
The Comelec has also expanded access to the results over the years. In 2013, a mirror server, donated by Rappler, was allowed to link to the transparency server, and this enabled the Comelec to give access to more media organizations.
In succeeding elections, the Comelec continued the practice of having an additional media server to increase access to real time results. It also gradually improved its delivery of electronically transmitted ERs.
The amount of ERs the media and watchdog groups were given access to through the transparency server systems have also improved significantly over time.
In 2010, the AES only managed to receive and release around 50% of granular precinct-level results to media and watchdog groups via the transparency servers. As of 2019, over 98% of ERs were received by transparency and media server end-users. This helped improve scrutiny of votes at the precinct level.
Controversies
However, the automated election process has not been without issues and controversies.
In the run-up to the 2013 polls, the VCM source code was “held hostage” by a legal battle between Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic in the US. As a result, local groups and poll watchdogs were not able to review the VCM source code.
It was only a few days before election day when the Comelec finally received the PCOS source code, which was then reviewed only by representatives from the two dominant political parties and the PPCRV.
In that same year, transmission to the Comelec transparency server stalled at 76% due to a mix of damaged compact flash (CF) cards in VCMs and weak telecommunications signals in some areas. After these issues were resolved, the ERs from these affected areas were eventually transmitted to the other Comelec servers a few days later.
Also in the 2013 midterm polls, an allegation surfaced online saying that a “60-30-10” pattern emerged in the senatorial race, which supposedly favored the administration bets of then-president Benigno Aquino III. Supposedly, 60% of the votes went to the Team PNoy slate, 30% went to the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) slate, while the remaining 10% went to other candidates.
However, experts pointed to the “law of large numbers” in explaining this supposed pattern. Further, data analysis by Rappler’s research team showed that regional and local breakdowns of the senatorial race also disproved this allegation. (READ: High-tech vote watching: Going beyond 60-30-10)
In 2016, a mismatch in the hashcode after the Comelec applied a cosmetic change to the character “Ñ” led to cheating allegations and a graph-making frenzy due to a tight vice presidential race.
The issue persisted even after the Comelec and Smartmatic demonstrated the process for verifying that the hash mismatch is traceable to the “Ñ” correction.
In 2019, what could have been a fairly good transmission delivery was marred by a glitch in the software that decrypts and consolidates ERs transmitted into results files that can be consumed by transparency and media server end users. This resulted in the inability of media organizations to tabulate real time results for almost seven hours.
For the duration of the glitch, the main election server continued to publish granular, albeit untabulated results. This became known as the seven-hour “glitch.”
In a briefing in May 2022, Comelec Deputy Executive Director for Operations Teopisto Elnas Jr. explained later to transparency server end users that while the issue could have been resolved by simply restarting the system, it took the Comelec team at the transparency server room seven hours to fix the issue because touching the system requires a Comelec en banc decision.
For the 2022 elections, the Comelec assured the public that this would not happen again because the system has been stress tested to the point where it could still process the results even if all vote counting machines transmitted at the same time.
Comelec personnel stationed at the server room have likewise been empowered to do simple fixes such as restarting the system, provided the code itself is not touched.
The Comelec’s vendor for the automated 2025 midterm elections is Korean firm Miru Systems.
In previous elections, the Comelec’s automated election vendor was Smartmatic. In November 2024 the Comelec barred Smartmatic from participating in future elections due to the alleged 2016 bribery scheme involving the company and former elections chief Andres Bautista. – Rappler.com / with reports from Michael Bueza