The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is looking to develop an alternative automated election system (AES), following President Rodrigo Duterte's order to replace Smartmatic, the country's vote-counting machine provider.

Secretary Eliseo Rio said his department is looking to use optical character recognition technology, which officials say is a cheaper, more transparent AES.

One of the main issues surrounding the AES used in the May elections was the lack of transparency over how ballots were counted, Rio said.

Rio added that he doesn't think there were anomalies in the last polls.

"There is no evidence really that there was cheating or some hocus pocus went with our elections," he told ANC's "Future Perfect."