As the Philippines prepares for its May 12, 2025 midterms, supporters of Rodrigo Duterte have circulated an old version of the ballot template to falsely claim the Commission on Elections (Comelec) misprinted the numbers assigned to three senatorial hopefuls from the arrested former president’s political party. In fact, the Comelec updated the template to add another candidate’s name, moving eight other people lower on the list.
A TikTok video posted April 14 shows an image of a sample ballot and highlights three senatorial candidates from PDP Laban, Duterte’s political party: arrested pastor Apollo Quiboloy, former presidential secretary Vic Rodriguez and actor Phillip Salvador.
The purported ballot lists Quiboloy at No. 52, Rodriguez at No. 55 and Salvador at No. 57.
The video then juxtaposes this with the party’s official campaign posters, which show numbers that are one higher for each candidate (archived link).
“The numbers shown for three PDP-Laban candidates became different. Beware,” says the video’s Tagalog caption, suggesting the Comelec altered the PDP Laban candidates’ ballot numbers in an attempt to confuse voters.
Several other posts on Facebook and TikTok reshared the claim.
Campaigning began in February in the Philippines for midterm elections that could set the table for the next presidential race and determine the political future of impeached Vice President Sara Duterte (archived link).
Talk show hosts, movie stars and a preacher jailed on sex trafficking charges are among the candidates vying for a dozen open Senate seats.
While the vote will fill more than 18,000 posts nationwide, it is the would-be senators who are facing a duty few bargained for — serving as jurists in the impeachment trial of Rodrigo Duterte’s eldest daughter.
The vice president, whose alliance with President Ferdinand Marcos has imploded spectacularly, was impeached by the House of Representatives on February 5 on charges of “violation of the constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes”.
Comments on the posts alleging election malfeasance indicate some users believed the claim.
“Cheating starts now,” one user wrote. Another said: “What is this Comelec, type of error?”
But the posts share an older version of the official ballot template.
Read the full story on AFP Fact Check.