NO BASIS

There is no basis to a claim on social media that public school teachers have been paid to tamper with the “final” results of the May 9 elections to ensure that presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his running mate Sara Duterte would win in their polling centers.

As of May 8, the Department of Education has not received such complaints from teachers working as election staff this year, DepEd Election Task Force Chairperson Alain Pascua said in an email to FactRakers.

Pascua said “there is no such designation as a ‘team leader’” among the poll workers mobilized by the Commission on Elections this year, 85% of whom come from DepEd.

He added that the term was never used even in orientations and training with them.

The resolution states that EB members close the voting by removing the secure digital cards from the vote-counting machines and placing these into an envelope. They will not use flash drives or codes, contrary to what is stated in the claim.

During the counting of votes and transmission of results, the EB members and poll watchers are required to “strategically position themselves to ensure transparency of all the proceedings,” according to the resolution.

Read the full story on FactRakers.

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.

factrakers.org