A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement.
Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte.
While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13.
Photo: AFP
However, Jun Burlasa III, a Filipino working in Singapore, said he would not vote again if he has to do it online.
“I’d rather do manual,” the 50-year-old said, describing the new system as “confusing and suspicious.”
At issue is a digital QR code generated after voting that leads users to a page asking them to verify their ballot has been submitted correctly. Below that is a box containing a jumble of computer code and candidate names.
Many of the names visible were candidates for whom he had not voted, Burlasa said.
Similar stories about the anxiety-inducing Web site have proliferated across social media, including Facebook posts that have reached thousands.
Eman Villanueva, a Hong Kong-based activist with migrant rights group BAYAN, said he was unsure his vote had been properly counted.
“There is absolutely no way for the voters to know if the votes that went through really reflected our choices,” he said.
In previous overseas elections, voters could review the names they selected after the fact, but the commission said the QR code was never supposed to serve that purpose.
The landing page was only intended to verify a ballot’s receipt, the commission said, adding that the name of every candidate running in the election should appear.
“We are definitely considering the feedback and studying how to incorporate them in future elections,” COMELEC overseas voting director Ian Geonanga said.
However, election watchdogs said the commission failed to properly explain the new system and warned of the confusion risks disenfranchising voters.
“It’s a natural reaction of people that if you’re not familiar with the system, then you won’t trust it the first instance,” said Ona Caritos, executive director of the nonprofit Legal Network for Truthful Elections.
Since April 14, 1.5 million people have watched a video in which a Philippines-based engineer named Jaydee San Juan quizzes ChatGPT about the names visible on the ballot verification page.
“It’s highly likely showing the candidates that were selected/voted for using that ballot ID,” the artificial intelligence chatbot replied.
However, COMELEC received the opposite answer when conducting the ChatGPT experiment itself, Geonanga said.
Meanwhile, the election commission’s efforts to quell fears about the new system have been misrepresented to sow more disinformation.
Agence France-Presse fact-checkers debunked a video edited to make it appear Geonanga was saying online ballots were “designed” to rig the election’s results.
The fiasco has also left election watchdogs and migrant groups skeptical that the switch to online voting will boost turnout as intended.
Danilo Arao, convener of voting watchdog Kontra Daya, said that even a small change to the ballot’s design might have helped assuage fears he believes could lead to “widespread disenfranchisement.”
Losing trust in the online voting system could affect overseas Filipino workers’ participation in the 2028 presidential election, Caritos said.
“We don’t want that, because if election results are not trusted by our voters, then it would go into the legitimacy of the government,” she said. “It’s a domino effect.”
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
RSS