Leading candidates in the upcoming May midterm elections are also among the top campaign violators, according to poll watchdog Vote Report PH.
In its initial findings, Vote Report PH recorded 94 illegal campaign incidents as of March 14. Among these, red-tagging accounted for 64 percent of violations.
“Some reports of red-tagging have been linked to the use of deepfakes to spread disinformation,” the group stated. Progressive senatorial and party-list candidates were identified as the primary targets.
Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia said the commission would review Vote Report PH’s findings and compare them with its own records.
“We stand with them in holding violators accountable for campaign rule breaches,” Garcia stated in response to the report.
Illegal campaigning made up 25 percent of recorded violations, while four percent involved vote-buying and three percent pertained to the illegal use of public resources.
“Most illegal campaign violations were committed by candidates leading in both formal and informal surveys,” Vote Report PH noted.
Ballot deployment
The deployment of official ballots for the midterm elections is scheduled to begin in the second week of April, according to the Comelec.
“We have an operational plan in place,” Garcia announced at a press conference after the completion of ballot printing on Saturday, March 15.
The first batch of ballots will be sent to Caraga and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Garcia explained that ballots for the most remote regions are prioritized for early shipment.
Other election materials, such as automated counting machines and Starlink technology for results transmission, are yet to be deployed.
The National Printing Office and Miru Systems have completed printing 68,542,564 official ballots in 48 days, despite a slight delay due to a Supreme Court order requiring the inclusion of an additional senatorial candidate.
With printing finished, Comelec is now focused on ballot verification.
Approximately half of the total ballots have already undergone machine and manual verification, with full completion expected by April 20 to 21.
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