The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said on Tuesday, May 13, that it is aware of reports regarding transmission variances during the 2025 midterm elections, assuring the public that issue is currently under technical review.
As chair of the Comelec Advisory Council, DICT secretary Henry Aguda has directed the DICT Cybersecurity Bureau to coordinate closely with Comelec and relevant agencies to verify and clarify the technical nature of the reports.
“Initial assessments suggest that while the transmissions from thousands of precincts were duplicated during consolidation in the servers for KBP, PPCRV, Namfrel, dominant minority party, and dominant majority party, it does not significantly affect the official results and the integrity of the votes. The duplication was resolved by proper filtering to get the accurate data,” the ICT agency said in a statement.
“There is no cause for alarm. The election results can still be verified and validated through the printed copies of the election returns. The integrity of the electoral process remains intact and we will issue additional clarifications as the technical review progresses,” it added.
The DICT and the Comelec, however, have not yet issued any statement on the reported issue with the installed software in the automated counting machines (ACMs).
A day before the elections on May 12, the Computer Professionals’ Union sought but failed to get a reaction from the poll body regarding the installed software (version 3.5.0) in the ACMs, which was different from the software that had undergone independent review (version 3.4.0).
“Instead of addressing these issues, the Comelec has decided to deflect these issues with inadequate responses… The Comelec has completely undermined the electoral process and Philippine democracy with the AES,” CPU said in a statement.
