Comelec Chair George Garcia shows a sample of the electronic ballot during the Local Source Code Review of the Automated Election Systems (AES) at the Circuit Corporation One building in Makati city on October 11, 2024. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News

MANILA — The Commission on Election (Comelec) received on Monday the source code for the overseas voting in the 2025 midterm polls.

LOOK: Comelec holds source code review for stakeholders

Comelec's international partner firm Pro V&V Inc. conducted the trusted build for the overseas voting on Saturday and turned it over to the commission on Monday. 

Pro V&V president and director Jack Cobb said it plans to conduct another testing on Wednesday to make sure the system will work properly.

When asked if it could already issue the certification for the system, Cobb explained that it would most likely issue it to the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) by the second week of April. 

“The report will be [given] to the TEC and to Comelec probably around mid-April and then from there it's gonna go through the TEC’s approval and it's gonna be Comelec’s approval. The actual certification usually does not occur around 2 weeks before the election,” Cobb said.

Cobb said it needs a lot of paper work before it can issue the certification to TEC. 

Comelec tests ‘trusted build’ of pilot online voting, counting system for midterm polls

“We have the hard work done, we have the source code done, we need to get the software functional audit report done. And all those combined together to make it complete the certification report. There’s also security portion which also needs to be written as well,” Cobb explained.

Comelec Chairman George Garcia said they are just waiting for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas' (BSP) approval to deposit the source code for the overseas voting.  

Comelec conducts final trusted build of automated counting machine

The Comelec has already deposited to BSP the source codes of the Automated Counting Machines (ACMs), Election Management System (EMS), and the Consolidated Canvassing System (CCS).

Garcia is confident that the commission is not violating any law that requires for a certification of the election system within 90-days before the election day.

“Gusto kong sabihin kasi sinasabi nila required tayo ng batas na 3-months, eh ibig sabihin po simula noong 2010 to 2022 lumalabag na pala tayo sa batas? Because hindi tayo nakakapag-comply sa 3-months. Yung 3-months na yan is directory not mandatory,” according to Garcia.