By Naomi Tamayo

The Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) held press briefings at 5:30 a.m. on May 9, Election Day, to assure that they were prepared to conduct a “safe” and “problem-free” election. 

At 6:50 A.M., the COMELEC revealed that some teachers who were supposed to serve as Board of Election Inspectors for at least 47 clustered precincts in the BARMM region have backed out due to “confusion” and “threat”.

In the first hour of the voting period, recorded incidents of faulty Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) rose to 1,800, with the COMELEC responding by repairing the defective VCMs.

Due to this, people were advised to either wait for the machines to be repaired and personally feed their ballots or to sign a waiver and allow the electoral board to feed it for them as a batch.

However, as of 11 A.M. Commissioner Marlon Casquejo said that 51 defective VCMs have been replaced, with the majority being in NCR.

At 9 A.M., Commissioner Garcia said COMELEC reported 73,982 out of over 84,000 expected local absentee ballots had been received by the poll body. 

Meanwhile, as of 10 A.M. almost 33% of Filipino overseas voters have casted their votes.

Incidents with electricity also occurred as Meralco recorded about 20 outages in its franchise throughout the day. Meanwhile, faulty electrical wiring caused a fire in San Andres, Manila, hitting a voting precinct.

Two hours before precincts closed, COMELEC Chairman Pangarungan stated that the COMELEC may declare a failure of elections in areas disrupted by election-related violence. Precincts have the possibility to be extended until all voters within a specified radius are able to vote. 

Later, COMELEC announced that they will be suspending the canvassing of votes from the night of May 9 to 1 P.M. the following day. 

Despite pleas to extend the polling hours beyond 7 P.M.Commissioner Garcia stated there was no justification to prolonging the polling hours.

Thirty minutes before 7 P.M, which is the cut-off time for voting., a commotion had occurred in a precinct in Quezon City because of a broken VCM hindering the citizens from casting their votes.

At 7 P.M. polls officially closed. However, voting period had been extended for voters within a 30-meter radius from their precincts. 

As of 8:10 P.M., ComElec Commissioner Casquejo reports that 62,875 out of 106,174 or approximately 59.21% of clustered precincts have transmitted their election results.

As of 8:30 P.M., the ComElec Media Transparency Website went live, with about 50% of precincts reporting.

As of the last update at 8:50PM, the current vote counts from COMELEC at 8:17 PM shows that Bongbong Marcos (PFP) leads the presidential race with 15,339,878 votes, while Sara Duterte-Carpio (LAKAS) leads the vice presidential race with 14,973,051 votes. 

On the canvassing of votes for president and vice president COMELEC clarified this action will be performed on May 23, once Congress resumes session.