File a complaint, Comelec urges uploader of viral pre-shading video

May 16, 2019

The Commission on Elections ( Comelec) on Thursday encouraged the uploader of a viral video in social media to file a complaint on the alleged pre-shading of ballots in a province in Lanao del Sur.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, in a press briefing, confirmed video exists but clarified they need to verify its authenticity.

“If you look at the video, even internally there is very little to tell you who is doing the shading, who is them in the context of election and so on..,” he said.

“We don’t know who upload it, or where it came from. Everything that we know about it is from the accompanying caption,” he added.

Jimenez said they will request for an assistant from Facebook and refer it to the appropriate authorities for forensic analysis.

“We are not dismissing it as fake. We are not ready to make that determination yet,” he said.

“We encourage whoever has information on this video to come forward and file a complaint. If it’s the original uploader themselves, so much the better,” he said.

Once proven true, Comelec will find out the scope of the incident whether it is limited to a certain place or not.

“It’s hard to imagine that the whole Philippines is affected,” he said.

“It’s very important first and foremost to establish the prominence of the video and the authenticity of the video as well as the accuracy of the claims being attached to the video,” Jimenez added.

He cautioned everyone from “jumping into conclusions” as it is only a video.

“If you only see a hand (doing pre-shadding), then the video proves nothing… we need to prove the content of the video,” said Jimenez.

On an earlier statement made by a Comelec official on the alleged video, Jimenez said they have seen two videos with same format where the other one is just signing the ballot boxes and the other one is doing pre-shading.

He said the difference between the two videos is the hand of the person who is doing the signing and the pre-shading.

“One telling difference between these two videos is that in the video where the hands is signing, the hand is coming from the side,” he said.

“In another video where it looks like the hand is shading an oval, the hand was coming from on top. Look at video again, this are the two differences,” Jimenez added.

The election spokesperson said it’s not a good idea to dismiss the video out of hand.

“Obviously there is nothing in the video that proves anything except that whatever is being shown is bieing done but there is no context into it, we don’t know when it was done or why it is being done or who is doing it,” Jimenez said.

He said if the video does not affect the outcome nationwide then there is no need to delay the proclamation of the winners.

“If proven that the ballots used were false, then let’s suspend the election by all means but will that affect anyone else? Unlikely… it’s probably not out of place in this particular case,” he said.

Jimenez said they will investigate the incident as it is very a suspicious looking video. Ella Dionisio/DMS