2022 Philippine National and Local Elections: A Vibrant Democracy amid Systemic Challenges (ANFREL International Election Observation Mission Report)

ANFREL's final report on the 9 May 2022 elections, based on 15 observers from 11 countries deployed to 197 clustered precincts across 14 regions plus overseas voting in Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan; ANFREL was the only international observer group deployed. It concludes the elections were credible and genuine, records over 83% turnout among 65,745,529 registered voters in 106,174 clustered precincts, with a footnote giving 83.07% for the presidential, vice-presidential and party-list contests and 83.11% for the senatorial contest, against 34.88% among 1,677,631 overseas voters. It reports that COMELEC told a Senate hearing on 31 May 2022 that 1,310 vote-counting machines (1,295 domestic and 15 overseas) and 618 SD cards had to be replaced on election day. It finds that the failures left up to one million voters queueing for hours with some likely disenfranchised, that ballot secrecy fell short of international standards, and that vote buying is the single biggest flaw in Philippine elections. It also records COMELEC's announcement of 20 June 2022 that the random manual audit found a 99.95928% accuracy rate across 746 audited ballot boxes.