NAMFREL is issuing this statement firstly, to clarify its position on the issues raised and, secondly, to give its point of view on the very serious allegation of fraud attending the 2022 National and Local Elections. As Bantay ng Bayan torchbearers, NAMFREL provides a thoughtful and objective analysis of the allegations as well as a thorough review of the reception logs and Raw Files posted in the website of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC).

NAMFREL stands by its Final Report on the 2022 National and Local Elections which may be found in https://namfrel.org.ph/. In said report, NAMFREL made the following observation on the automated election system (AES) used in the 2022 National and Local Elections: “Based on data made available, NAMFREL did not observe any anomalies in the automated counting of votes and electronic transmission of election results in the 2022 National and Local Elections”.

NAMFREL agrees with the observation that the private IP address 192.168.0.2 was extensively recorded in the Raw Files. NAMFREL, however, finds that the reception logs and the Raw Files uploaded in COMELEC’s website do not show proof that

1. There existed a secret local area network (LAN) that acted like a man-in-the middle
   (MITM) device which was used to transmit fabricated election results;
2. There exists pre-programmed vote counting machines that generated fabricated election results;
3. The LAN-MITM facilitated the speedy transmission of more than 20,000,000 votes from 39,512 vote counting machines to the transparency server within one hour from close of polls; and
4. There existed fabricated election results or spurious election returns.

NAMFREL believes that the issues raised are rooted on the non-transparent automated election system and the lack of transparency in its implementation.

In the spirit of COMELEC Chairman George Garcia’s pronouncement of full transparency, NAMFREL calls on the COMELEC to make publicly available the transmission logs of the three telecommunications service providers as well as other automated election system generated election data. ###