BY FRANCESSCA ABALOS
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — On Monday, May 12, 23-year-old Rachelle Junsay, volunteered for the first time to monitor the conduct of the 2025 midterm elections with election watchdog Vote Report PH. 

Junsay, also the national coordinator of Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP), worked as an all-rounder at Vote Report PH and Kontra Daya’s shared monitoring center. In the morning, she categorized reports of election violations. By the afternoon, she was tasked to write captions for social media posts on the 2025 Election Violation Report. However, it was her first task that she found most challenging. 

The large amount of report submissions from multiple platforms made it tedious. Even though she primarily dealt with reports from X (formerly Twitter), she had to sift through the rants to find out real complaints and sort them based on the violation’s location and type. 

“It also takes a lot of, like, energy to really skim through the reports. But I also think it’s fulfilling too because you get to see the different kinds of people, the things they experience, and it really humanizes the election system. There are actual people being deprived of their right to vote because of these issues that the Comelec [Commission on Elections] or the rest of the government should focus on,” she said in a mix of English and Tagalog.

More than this, the work also helped her better connect the environmental advocacy of YACAP with the call for government accountability and transparency. 

In the end, her efforts helped the monitoring team visualize the election fraud happening on the ground. Their data showed that most issues from the 1,140 verified election complaints were related to issues in the automated counting machines (ACMs) (50.09%), with experiences of illegal campaigning (12.55%) and voter disenfranchisement (9.04%) following behind. 

These numbers are a testament to Junsay and other vote watchers’ hard work. 

Freer information, freer people

After the elections, Junsay believes that somehow, what they did helped empower Filipinos. 

Publishing information on election irregularities helps people become more aware of what is happening to the nation, she said. When citizens are able to learn more about election issues, they are encouraged to engage more deeply with the government and its systems. 

As such, she believes the reports of Vote Report PH helped Filipinos picture how the elections play into the game of traditional politicians as “scientific evidence on how our election system is really not right and needs to be changed.” 

In this way, the reports and other information sources fuel demands for fairer and more transparent elections—enabling them to understand why and how to demand for change. 

An example of this is a recent statement by Kontra Daya based on additional data regarding election issues and inconsistencies demanding the Commission on Elections (Comelec) resolve these problems before proclaiming any victors. “These are serious problems that shouldn’t be swept under the rug. These have caused the disenfranchisement of millions of votes, and consequently the future of our country,” Kontra Daya convener Danilo Arao said in the statement. 

Such efforts are vital to improving the current election system, but Junsay also emphasized that the data published by Vote Report PH should be used and studied well beyond the election period. A sentiment the group hinted at when thanking its volunteers. 

She explained in a mix of English and Tagalog, “We understand that the role of elections is very big, especially in choosing our next set of leader[s], but it’s also important for us to practice our democratic rights every day.] The call for accountability must be continuous, the campaign for better solutions must be continuous.”

To ensure this fight goes on, she wants vote watchers like her to channel the data from the reports into a campaign to remind Filipinos that these are “not just fraud in elections, but a violation of [their] rights as people.” 

For Junsay, she will continue this effort through her environmental work in YACAP, visible in its youth climate agenda. “It’s a continuous campaign for really monitoring and criticizing those who win. And, of course, the providing of alternatives for their current projects that are als very environmentally destructive. The voice of the youth to call for better solutions to make sure that the transition being promoted to agree to a sustainable future is one that is still pro-people and pro-planet,” she asserted in Taglish. (With reports from Ruth Nacional) (RTS, RVO)

Disclosure: Kontra Daya’s convenor, Danilo Arao is Bulatlat’s associate editor.

Editor’s note: This article was edited to correct the name of the source, Rachelle Junsay, previously written as “Ruth Junsay.”