Comelec airs warning vs ‘IT experts’ who offer to rig polls
Criminal groups claiming to have the technical expertise or inside access to secure the victory of candidates in the May elections are already going around and offering their services, according to the head of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Candidates should be “responsible enough not to deal with these people. Why are you transacting with them in the first place? Does that mean that you are actually believing the lies that they are peddling?” Comelec Chair George Garcia said.
“At the first instance that they try to offer their services, you should report them to the police and have them arrested,” he told reporters during a press conference at Camp Crame on Tuesday.
Three such persons claiming to be information technology (IT) specialists and connected with the Comelec were arrested by operatives of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) also on Tuesday.
According to CIDG Director Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III, the suspects asked for P90 million from Robert Turingan and his daughter Karen Kaye, who are both running for mayor and vice mayor, respectively, in Enrile, Cagayan province.
Entrapment
The suspects offered their services to the family in the 2019 and 2022 elections, but the Turingans declined, Torre said at the same press conference.
“These people approached them again for the 2025 elections, telling them the reason they lost in the past two polls was because they were paid by their opponents to manipulate the results,” Garcia said.
“So to be sure that they will win this time, they ‘paid,’ but only a fraction of the P90 million,” he noted.
According to Turingan, who was also at the press conference, he gave the suspects P2 million as bait.
Five suspects were later arrested in an entrapment operation at a shopping mall in Marikina City, but four others were able to escape.
“Now, even if I don’t win this election, I am still a winner because I already had them arrested,” Turingan said.
“Do not be convinced that these people can tamper with the results of our automated elections. They are just scammers who want to leech money off politicians, regardless of their political parties,” Garcia warned.
Operators in Metro Manila
According to the poll chief, they are also monitoring two women claiming to be consultants of the Comelec and going around Mindanao to lure local politicians with the same scam.
In Metro Manila, Garcia said, there is another group of five people looking for candidates to victimize, including a former Comelec employee who worked under the commission’s election contest and adjudication department 17 years ago.
There are also groups who claim to have access to official ballots and the ability to secretly put “invisible ink” on them so they would be rejected by the machine as part of a scheme to favor a paying candidate.
Garcia doubted whether such a modus operandi was possible given the high level of security at the National Printing Office and the presence of observers who can countercheck the ballots produced.
New technology
The Comelec has decided to do away with the vote-counting machines provided by Smartmatic that had been in use since 2010, replacing them with new machines from South Korea’s Miru Systems Co. Ltd.
The shift aims to improve the efficiency and accuracy of vote counting, but critics remain concerned about the readiness of the new machines and the challenges that may arise on Election Day itself.
