BAGUIO CITY – The Commission on election (Comelec) said that it is ready for the conduct of the May 12, 2025 mid-term election where more than 1.1 million voters from the different parts of the Cordillera will troop to the established polling centers to cast their votes for their chosen candidates in the national and local levels.
Lawyer Julius Torres, regional director of the Cordillera office of the Comelec, said that the recent testing and sealing of the automated counting machines (ACMs) that will be used during the voting have been successfully conducted that ensured that all the distributed machines are in good working condition.
However, he admitted that there were some minor technical glitches that were encountered in three areas in the region during the testing and sealing but the same were immediately given attention by the assigned technicians.
The Comelec official claimed that in the case of the ACM in Loakan in Baguio City, the defective USB port was replaced, the defective cutter of the machine in Kabugao, Apayao was also repaired while the defective scanner in Barling, Mountain Province was also replaced.
Further, Tagel stated that the official ballots that will be used during the polls are now lodged with the different city and municipal treasury offices and will be distributed to the members of the board of election inspectors (BEIs) in the next few days in time for the casting of votes.
All the polling precincts in the different parts of the region will open at around 5 am on Monday, May 12, 2025 to give way for the early voting of senior citizens, persons with disability (PWDs) and pregnant women while the schedule of voting for regular voters will be from 7 am to 7 pm.
At the same time, the various Star Link kits have also been distributed to the 45 towns in the different provinces that were earlier identified by the poll body to have problems on the internet signal to ensure the timely transmission of the election results from the precinct level to the seven servers with the prescribed time frame after the closing of the casting of votes.
According to him, the region is projected to be generally peaceful during the conduct of the election, except for law and order issues in the conflict-stricken Abra province.
Earlier, the Police Regional Office (PRO) in the Cordillera deployed some 240 additional law enforcers to help in maintaining law and order in Abra during the conduct of the elections as part of the efforts to ensure the honest, orderly and peaceful elections in the said province.
Moreover, some 184 police personnel were also trained by the Commission on election (Comelec) on the administration of the election to serve as back up in case there will be some members of the board of election inspectors (BEIs) who will back out of their election duties for whatever reasons known to them.
Torres urged the voters in the different parts of the region to go out and vote on election day for them to be able to exercise their right to vote for their chosen candidates in the national and local levels so that their voices will be heard on who will be the deserving officials of their respective areas. By Dexter A. See
