FALSE

Presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. received 5,425 votes in Lamitan City, Basilan in the 2016 vice presidential elections, according to the 2016 election results dashboards of ABS-CBN and GMA, contrary to his supporters’ claims that all votes in the city went to his rival Leni Robredo because of electoral fraud.

Marcos and other candidates received zero votes in only one polling center, Bohenange Elementary School, out of 38 polling centers in the city, according to the Commission on Elections’ dashboard for the 2016 national and local elections. Robredo received 595 votes from the clustered precinct’s 620 valid ballots.

A supporter of Marcos revived the false claim on May 3, saying the presence of three Iglesia ni Cristo churches in the city should have made it “impossible” for Marcos to receive no votes. The religious group endorsed Marcos for vice president in 2016.

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FactRakers is a Philippines-based fact-checking initiative of journalism majors at the University of the Philippines-Diliman working under the supervision of Associate Professor Yvonne T. Chua of the University of the Philippines’ Journalism Department. Associate Professor Ma. Diosa Labiste, also of the Journalism Department, serves as editorial consultant.

The name of the initiative, coined from the words “fact” and “raker,” is inspired by the term “muckrakers,” first used in the early 1900s by American president Theodore Roosevelt to express his annoyance at progressive, reform-minded journalists at the time.

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