Democracy Watch, a citizen-led organization based in the Philippines, has lauded the 2016 Philippine General Elections, calling the event a success.
The organization based its assessment on what it calls verifiable facts. First and foremost, turnout reached a historic records – over 43 million Filipinos headed to the polls.
Secondly, the elections saw the largest deployment of Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) in the world. 92,509 VCMs deployed across the nation were instrumental in the integrity of the process. The technology allowed authorities to publish results in nearly real time as data arrived at the Transparency Server.
These were the third automated national elections since 2010. With experience, each election has yielded better results. In the previous elections, election data transmission rates were 76 % and 90 % in 2013 and 2010, respectively; while voter turnout was 77 % in 2013 and 74.8 % in 2010, this year it reached 81.7 %. This time around, the Commission on Elections “was able to proclaim an astounding near-perfect 99.95 % of all 18,000 or so elective positions ten days after the elections.”
Another strong testament to the credibility of the election results was the fact that more than 20,000 candidates conceded on election night. Presidential candidates Mar Roxas and Grace Poe conceded the next day, while vice-presidential candidates Chiz Escudero and Allan Peter Cayetano did the same later on.
You can read the report by clicking here.