SENATE Minority Floor Leader Sen. Koko Pimentel feels cautious about the plan of the Commission on Election (COMELEC) to utilize an online platform for the voting of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in the 2025 midterm elections.
According to Pimentel, there is no law supporting the use of the internet for voting.
“I have serious reservation. We really need a law if we are to adopt internet voting. It’s good we do things correctly. With legal basis,” said Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III.
But the COMELEC is determined to use online voting.
According to COMELEC Chair Atty. George Garcia, aside from the absence of a law for internet voting, it hasn’t been challenged in the Supreme Court.
“We’ve carefully considered all the implications, all the possibilities, and we need to proceed with our internet voting because our resolution allowing internet voting even without a law hasn’t been challenged in the Supreme Court. We believe the consequences of not proceeding with internet voting, which our overseas countrymen are already anticipating, would be more severe,” Atty. George Garcia, Chairman, COMELEC stressed.
Garcia said that overseas voting is a lot more convenient for the COMELEC and to Filipinos abroad.
The Commission will be able to avoid significant expenses, and OFWs no longer need to go to distant embassies and consulates just to vote.
“Our fellow citizens won’t need to use machines anymore. They no longer need to go to embassies, to consulates. They’ll only need their cellphones, laptops, and iPads. Especially our seafarers, our mariners. They won’t need to dock at the pier, to embassies so far away just to cast their votes,” Garcia added.
“In those areas, there won’t be a need to send envelopes containing ballots that usually come back, marked as return to sender, because they aren’t accepted by the recipients, who should be residents or where our fellow citizens work. So, we’re wasting our payments,” he said.
COMELEC to implement ‘substitution’ ban for withdrawals after deadline for COC filing
Meanwhile, all members of the Comelec En Banc approved the removal of substitution from the elections process.
According to Garcia, they will no longer allow the substitution or replacement of candidates after the last day of filing of the Certificate of Candidacy or COC, except in cases where the candidate died or was disqualified.
“The Commission En Banc unanimously agreed to my proposal of no substitution after the last day of filing of candidacy, which is October 8th, if the ground is withdrawal of candidacy,” Garcia expressed.
Substitution is still allowed if the reason is due to the candidate’s death or disqualification, as long as the replacement shares the same family name and belongs to the same political party.
He says this is a way to prevent people from being deceived in voting.
“If you truly desire to serve the public, wouldn’t it be better if you were truly committed? Lay it out immediately. File your candidacy. Because sometimes, our fellow citizens are unaware that there has been a change, so they still think Candidate A is running when Candidate B has actually taken their place,” Garcia added.
Moreover, the printing of ballots can be expedited if there are no longer any withdrawals and substitutions being processed.
“We can’t finalize the list of candidates immediately, causing delays in printing our ballots. Wouldn’t it be better if the candidate list were finalized as early as December? Our only concern then would be nuisance candidacies, which we should resolve before the end of November this year,” he ended.
