In the wake of the razor-thin victory of former Catanduanes State University president Dr. Patrick Alain Azanza over Vice Governor Peter Cua in the gubernatorial race, a recent social media post drew attention to the observation that overvotes and undervotes shaped the outcome of the race for the Capitol’s top post.
Based on the Commission on Elections’ vote statistics of the 2025 local elections in the province (see table on top), the overvotes, or the uncounted votes as a result of the voter picking more than one candidate for governor, came up to 1,092, which is three times Azanza’s 362-vote winning margin. These excess votes were naturally uncounted.
On the other hand, the undervotes, which resulted when the voter did not pick their choice among the four candidates, came up to a huge 11,880 votes which could have made the difference for the loser as it was nearly 33 times the winning margin.
The undeniable fact made the shocked supporters of the defeated candidates ask what could have happened had these voters actually made their choice among the four candidates for governor.
It should be noted that in any of the 11 towns, the number of undervotes was more than the winning margin itself and as much as seven times the latter in the case of Virac’s 2,214 undervote total.
Was the huge number of undervotes evidence of fraud or something wrong in the voting process?
Apparently not.
A check of the 2022 voting statistics from the COMELEC website shows that the overvote/undervote total of 16,600 for the gubernatorial race was even higher than the 12,772 votes which went uncounted in last week’s polls.
Three years ago, it was incumbent Gov. Joseph Cua against then Vice Governor Shirley Abundo, who lost by a margin of nearly 50,000 votes, an insurmountable divide even if the uncounted votes were added to her total.
In the municipality of Bagamanoc, which in the May 12, 2025 elections registered the second percentage of undervotes compared to the number of actual voters at 9.54 percent, the 2022 vote statistics indicate that the undervote percentage for governor was even higher in 2022 at 10.1%.
The undervote percentages for the posts of congressman in 2022 was even higher at 8.76 percent, more than twice the 4.23 percent registered in last week’s elections.
In the mayoral contest, the undervote percentage in 2022 in Bagamanoc was 4.6 percent, which is also more than double the 1.77 percent of the 2025 NLE.
This likely means that the overvote/undervote is a regular occurrence in Catanduanes elections and possibly anywhere in the country.
And those who lost by slim margins in Catanduanes – Vice Governor Peter Cua (362 votes), Pandan Mayor Raul Tabirara (41 votes) and congressman’s daughter Princess Vanessa Rodriguez (8 votes) – would find it hard to use the undervote as a ground for an election protest.
Under existing election laws, losing candidates can resort to the protest as a legal remedy to contest the results by claiming that the electoral process by irregularities, fraud, or other forms of electoral misconduct, which affected the outcome of the election.
Fraudulent acts include tampering with election documents, vote-buying, bribery, and other deceitful practices while irregularities include non-compliance with election procedures, improper canvassing of votes, failure to secure election documents, or unlawful counting of votes.
The most common complaints in today’s automated election system are errors in counting or tabulation: miscomputation, incorrect appreciation of ballots, or malfunction of election machines.
This would also cover glitches in the transmission of results, which reportedly occurred during the 2025 NLE in Catanduanes.
On the other hand, an election protest can be sustained if the winning candidate is disqualified by law (e.g., lacking residency, violating the rules on citizenship, or engaging in prohibited conduct like exceeding campaign spending limits) or if there is widespread fraud or terrorism which results in a failure of elections and consequently, the annulment of the results.
Assuming that the poll losers would contest the results on the basis of the transmission system error, incorrect reading of the ballots by the machine, or even evidence of system manipulation, the protest would have to be filed within 10 days after the May 13 proclamation of results, which would fall on May 23.
The petitioners would have to present clear and detailed allegations of the irregularities, fraud, or illegal acts; identify the areas where the alleged fraud or irregularities occurred; and state the remedies sought, such as a manual recount of votes, annulment of the election results, or declaration of the protestant as the duly elected candidate.
The legal action would not come cheap, as the petitioner would have to pay a fee to the Regional Trial Court as well as a bond of P25,000 for every precinct covered by the protest, plus the legal fees to be charged by his or her counsel.
The recount in the RTC, however, could be done in a shorter period compared to a protest lodged by losers in congressional races with the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET), which often take months or even a few years to be resolved.