An overview of elections in the Philippines

By James Jimenez

There will be millions of first-time voters in 2025, so I made a cheat-sheet for them.

The Electoral System:

• The Philippines uses a first-past-the-post system of voting. Under such a system, the candidate who gets the most number of votes wins, even if that candidate fails to get a majority of the votes cast for the position.
• There are no minimum votes required, under a first-past-the-post system, thus a low voter turn-out will generally not result in a failure of elections.
• A failure of elections can be declared when the conditions for a free and fair elections no longer exist. In the past, failure of elections have been declare when voting physically could no longer be held due to the destruction of the polling place, or the destruction of polling equipment. Similarly, when the voters are prevented from voting – either physically, or out of fear of violence or reprisal, a failure of elections may be declared. However, in the event of a declaration of failure, the elections will be rescheduled as soon as the reason for the failure no longer exists.
• The President and Vice-President are voted for every six years. The next time we get to vote for President and Vice-President will be in 2028, or six years from 2022.
• Senators are also voted for every six years. However, because the terms of Senators are staggered, with the terms of half of the Senate expiring every three years, elections for 12 Senatorial seats are conducted every three years.
• The Party-List members of the House of Representatives are voted for nationally, just like the President, VP and Senators. This is because they are considered to have a national constituency, as opposed to District Representatives who have local constituencies.
• Members of the House of Representatives and all other local candidates have 3-year terms and come up for election every three years. As you probably already know, the 1987 Constitution mandates that National and Local elections be held every three years, on the 2^nd Monday of May – hence, May 12, 2025. Also, note that Philippine elections are synchronized, which means both National and Local Elections are held on one and the same day.

Voter Registration:

• Citizens of the Philippines, at least 18 years old on the day of election, meeting all the necessary residency requirements, and who are not disqualified by law, are eligible to vote. In order to exercise that right to vote, however, eligible citizens are required to register with the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
• Voter registration is conducted all-year round, punctuated by the suspensions of the registration period during the period starting one hundred twenty (120) days before a regular election and ninety (90) days before a special election. Note that the law – Republic Act 8189 – does not dictate when voter registration is resumed after the period of suspension, so this question is left to the COMELEC to decide.
• COMELEC is currently in the middle of a registration cycle, and conducts registration in local election offices and in several satellite registration centers all across the country. The registration period ends on September 30, 2024.
• Voters who have failed to vote in two successive regular elections will have their names deactivated from the list of voters, and will not be able to vote.
• If you failed to vote in the National and Local Elections of 2022, as well as the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections of 2023, you will need to re-activate your registration record in order to vote in 2025.

Voting:

• On election day, registered voters must go to designated polling places in order to cast their vote. Polling places are typically located in public schools. For 2025, however, the COMELEC has announced that it will pilot test holding elections in malls.
• Also for 2025, the COMELEC will be employing an automated election system which the poll body refers to as FASTrAC – Fully Automated System, with Transparency Audit/Count. According to the latest news reports, 110,000 individual Automated Count Machine (ACM) units will be deployed nationwide.
• While the exact details of the voting procedures are still being finalized by the COMELEC, it is presumed that the general outlines of voting will be similar to those of previous elections.
• Voters will indicate their choices by shading in the appropriate spaces on the ballot. The ballot will then be inserted into the ACM, which automatically counts the marks on the ballot, tallying the totals for each candidate. After the ballot is counted, it is automatically deposited into the secure ballot box.

Vote Counting

• In previous elections, the counting machines would print out the final precinct tally after the close of voting. The precinct tally would be recorded by both the COMELEC and the accredited citizen’s arms, after which the soft copy of precinct tally data would be electronically transmitted to the municipal canvassing center.
• At the municipal canvassing center, the precinct tallies of all the precincts within than municipality will be consolidated into one municipal canvass report. This report will then be electronically transmitted to the Provincial canvassing center, where the same consolidation process will be carried out. Provincial canvass reports will then be electronically transmitted to the National Board of Canvassers, for national consolidation of results.
• Once the canvassing is completed, election results are immediately announced and the winners proclaimed. In a Presidential election however, the winner is not proclaimed by the National Board of Canvassers, as that task falls to Congress.

Not Comprehensive … YET

This cheat-sheet is by no means comprehensive, and will be subject to some revision as we get closer and closer to the 2025 National and Local Elections. Still, this is a good place to start for those who are, for the first time, approaching the electoral system as participant rather than treating it like a spectator sport.