People line up as Comelec launches its Register Anywhere and the Special Register Anywhere Program at the Comelec Headquarters in Intramuros, Manila on February 12, 2024. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News 

MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday said its preparations for the 2025 elections took a hit due to cuts in its proposed budget for next year.

At a budget briefing before the Senate Finance Committee, Comelec Chairperson George Erwin Garcia said the poll body's original P49-billion budget proposal for next year was slashed down to P35 billion.

"Unfortunately po ito pong P14 billion [na natanggal], yung 3 billion po dito ay para sa National and Local Elections po sana at doon po para po sa Barangay and SK Election ng December 2025 ay P8 billion," Garcia said.

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The poll chief explained that this would mainly affect the support staff for the BSKE.

"Nawala po yung fund sa support staff at saka po yung parang honorarium po nila. At the same time, dapat po doon sa national and local elections kami po ay pinaglaban po namin at pinayagan naman po kami ng executive na magkaroon ng across the board na P2,000 ang lahat ng mga guro na maglilingkod sa National and Local Elections pero wala po yung P2,000 na yun sa Barangay and SK Elections," Garcia said.

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Garcia added that training for teachers on election duty for the national and local elections would suffer.

He noted that the budget cut included P1.4 billion that would have gone to the training of teachers and other related expenses like venue rental, food, and transportation. 

The remaining funds are for forms and supplies for voters education, he added. 

Garcia appealed for the restoration of the budget that was cut for the 2025 BSKE.

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CLAMPDOWN ON AI MISUSE, TROLL FARMS  

The Commission on Elections will clamp down on the misuse of artificial intelligence and troll farms in the 2025 Election, Garcia said in the same briefing. 

He said the poll body promulgated rules to attempt to regulate AI, deep fakes, soft fakes and other programs.

"Ang sa amin po we will not absolutely prohibit the use of AI because maayos maganda naman po yun kapag nagamit talaga nang maayos," Garcia said. 

"We're hoping that using the guidelines… we can easily request the [social media] platforms to remove the malicious information  or news or fake news," he said. "At the same time we will be able to register the accounts of candidates that they will be using."

"We will be punishing those who will be guilty or proven to have committed misinformation disinformation saka fake news po." he added. "Even po yung mga troll farms, we will try to weed out."

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MOCK POLLS 

The Comelec said it was scheduling mock elections in November as part of efforts to test the automated election system for the 2025 elections.

Garcia said the poll body was  already testing the vote counting machines and transmission system in its warehouse in Binan, Laguna, while a separate field testing was being scheduled in  October. International certification of the source code will also be done this year.

"Importante po lahat ng ito upang masubukan ang kahandaan ng mga makina," Garcia said.

He said he expected all machines to be delivered within the year.