Broadcast error fuels Philippine poll fraud claims
"God Comelec! It's Atty.Vic's name but Bam's face?" reads a Facebook post shared May 13, 2025, referring to candidate Vic Rodriguez and newly elected Senator Bam Aquino.
"Did you swap their votes? You panicked while switching votes so you made this mistake?"
The post includes a news graphic titled: "Bilang Pilipino 2025 Senatorial Race". It depicts votes received by six Senate bets.
However, the pictures and names do not match. The candidate ranked first, for example, has incumbent Senator Christopher Go's photo but is labelled Willie Revillame.
Similar posts rocketed across Facebook and TikTok a day after the archipelago nation's mid-term vote, which was largely defined by the explosive feud between President Ferdinand Marcos and impeached Vice President Sara Duterte (archived link).
The dozen senators chosen nationally will form half the jury in Duterte's July trial that could see her permanently barred from public office (archived link).
Comments on the posts indicate some people believed the graphic was proof Comelec rigged the votes.
"Comelec's deception busted," one reads.
Another says "Garcia must be held accountable," referring to poll body chairman George Garcia.
A keyword search on Google for "Bilang Pilipino 2025" found the faulty graphic in News5's live election night broadcast on Facebook (archived link).
AFP reviewed the original segment before it was edited out of the larger live stream. According to the anchors, the graphic showed unofficial results, with 58.89 percent of votes transmitted.
Local media ABS-CBN and GMA News also aired the results around the same time. The top six candidates and their corresponding votes are consistent with the pictures and tallies in News5's graphic (archived here and here).
News5 has since apologised for the name mix-up, which it attributed to a "graphics error".
"For a few seconds at around 9:15 p.m., we showed a tally of the partial, unofficial results for the senatorial contest that had the correct ranking and photos of candidates. The names, however, did not match," the broadcaster said in a Facebook statement published May 15 (archived link).
"Measures will be taken so that this does not happen again."
AFP has debunked more election-related misinformation in the Philippines here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
39 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Ukraine's Drone Attack Points to a U.S. Vulnerability
Imagine this: Beijing launches a surprise invasion of Taiwan. As U.S. forces mobilize to respond, something far worse unfolds here at home. Sleeper agents—Chinese operatives who entered the U.S. months or years earlier—activate. In basements and garages across the country, they've been quietly assembling first-person-view drones from commercially available parts for a few hundred dollars each.
CBS News
42 minutes ago
- CBS News
How Burlington County prepared for New Jersey primary election – new voting equipment, more locations
Tuesday is primary day in New Jersey, and many voters walked inside the Hainesport Municipal Building in Burlington County to cast their ballots Tuesday. For many, it was only a matter of minutes until they were back outside heading to their cars in the parking lot. The race with the most attention is the Democratic and Republican primary for governor. "It was just a piece of cake, just walk right in," Terry Horner said. "It was very quick, in and out," James Cosby said. "Now, it was easy peasy, they seemed to have solved a lot of the issues," Ted Costa said. This is a primary and not a presidential year or a general election, so turnout is expected to be much lower than the last election in November. READ MORE: Where do you vote for New Jersey's 2025 primary election? Find your polling location Costa said as he waited to cast his ballot for President Trump in November, he had to wait four hours before he was able to vote. Chopper 3 captured the crowds of voters stuck in line for hours in Burlington County seven months ago. From Hainesport to Medford and Evesham, voters complained about technical issues and not enough machines. CBS News Philadelphia New Jersey's attorney general also successfully sued to extend the deadline and add an extra hour of voting in Burlington County. "By the time we got in and we thought this isn't so bad, well you had to go all the way down to the back of the building then go all the way back, it was just crazy," Horner recalled. County leaders called the chaos "unacceptable" and vowed a "top to bottom review" to prevent a similar experience. CBS News Philadelphia followed up to see if any changes were made. According to a county spokesperson, several improvements have been implemented since November: Two new early voting locations were opened, bringing the county's total up to nine. Additional polling locations were added in some voting districts. New voting equipment, which includes ballot marking devices and tabulators, was purchased. Additional poll worker training was offered, and the superintendent of elections continues to offer voters tutorials on the voting equipment. More information technology workers have been deployed to polling locations to assist with tech issues and reduce response times. Cosby said the changes were obvious and very much needed. "Oh, I think it should have been addressed a long time ago," Cosby said, "but they seem to be doing a pretty good job here."
Wall Street Journal
3 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
‘Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized' Review: A People Persecuted
In 2017, satellite images, leaked government documents, online tenders for prison construction and guards, as well as social-media posts of ribbon-cutting ceremonies revealed a network of prison camps used to detain, torture and politically indoctrinate Turkic Muslims in China's far-western region of Xinjiang. The following year the U.S. State Department cited estimates that between 800,000 and 2 million people were interned in these camps. Initially the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) denied the camps' existence. One official insisted that China was the target of vicious lies and claimed that Xinjiang's Muslims were the 'happiest in the world.' As shock and revulsion spread around the world, however, officials put forward another line: The camps were 'vocational education and training centers' providing instruction in Mandarin language, civic education and even hairdressing. Meanwhile, across Xinjiang, mosques were being razed and intensive surveillance imposed; officials were deployed to monitor the population, some by living in their subjects' homes and sharing their beds as part of the 'Join Up and Become Family' program. In 'Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized,' John Beck illustrates the brutality of China's repression through the experiences of four individuals. Saira is a Kazakh writer and entrepreneur; Tursunay is a Uyghur nurse. Both women survived the re-education camps. Adiljan, a Uyghur, fled Xinjiang after a brief detention and settled in Istanbul, where he sought out and confronted Chinese agents spying on the Uyghur exile community. Serikzhan, a Kazakh national based in Almaty, sounded the alarm about his fellow Kazakhs being persecuted in China; for this he earned the wrath of his own government. Driven to recover territories lost at the fall of the Qing empire in 1911, China's People's Liberation Army took control of Xinjiang in 1949 and then Tibet, to Xinjiang's south, during the 1950s. Together these two regions constitute an enormous swath of territory along China's frontiers, sparsely populated by inhabitants with close cultural and religious ties with neighboring India and parts of the Soviet Union that would later become the independent Central Asian republics.
