Senators, party-list winners known 3 days after polls

November 17, 2024 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Results of the senatorial and party-list races will be known two to three days after the May 12, 2025 elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.

“For senatorial bets and party-list organizations, it would be two days, the most three days to get to know the results,” Comelec chief George Garcia said during the Automated Counting Machine (ACM) Field Testing at the Taguig Convention Center.

For local candidates such as mayor and vice mayor, waiting time will be shorter as results can be revealed around 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. of election day, depending on the speed of the transmission of results and the signal strength, according to Garcia.

“If all precincts in a particular city or municipality will be able to end voting almost at the same time, then they will already know who won as mayor of their town because the election return will have already been printed,” Garcia said.

“Even if there has been no transmission (of results) yet and the election return has been printed and posted outside the precinct, the candidate will already know if he/she won or lost,” he added.

Garcia, however, pointed out that the poll results that will be known to the general public will remain unofficial and uncanvassed as the process of canvassing from the precinct to the national board of canvassers must be observed, as provided by law.

“We know the results, but they will still be unofficial. We should still wait for the official results, which will come from that hierarchy of canvassing,” he added.

So far, ACM field tests have been smooth from voting, counting, printing of election returns and transmission, the poll chief said.

The field tests were held in Hamtic and San Jose in Antique, Basco and Ivana in Batanes, Davao City and Malalag in Davao del Sur, Quezon and Roxas in Palawan, Bongao and Languyan in Tawi-Tawi and Kapalawan and Ligawasan in the Special Geographic Area.

In the National Capital Region, field tests were conducted in the cities of Manila and Taguig and the municipality of Pateros.

Field tests were also done outside the country such as New York and Washington in the United States, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Tokyo in Japan and Athens in Greece.