The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) on Saturday denied circulating reports of vote duplication and a glitch in its server, calling the claims “fake news.”

According to the poll body, the COMELEC Server receives real-time, human-readable Election Returns (ERs) directly from the vote-counting machines (VCMs) in precincts. It does not process, clean, sum up votes, or rank candidates.

COMELEC emphasized that media servers also receive ERs directly from the VCMs but in machine-readable format. Media entities are responsible for retrieving and processing the data using their own systems.

However, the COMELEC noted that some media entities failed to install or use the appropriate software to correctly read and process the data they received, which led to reports of data “duplication.” These issues, the poll body clarified, occurred in the media entities’ systems—not in the COMELEC server.

COMELEC Chairman George Erwin Garcia said the agency does not and cannot perform vote summation or candidate ranking.

“Ang COMELEC, wala kaming pagsusuma total. Wala kaming ranking. Hindi kami pwedeng gumawa n’on. Bawal. Sapagkat kami ang COMELEC,” Garcia said.

He added that the results published on the COMELEC website are real-time and reflect ERs directly transmitted from each precinct.

“Ang makikita niyo po sa website ng COMELEC, real time. Ibig sabihin, hindi s’ya late, kundi real time ang result ng mga Election Returns na nanggagaling sa bawat presinto,” Garcia said.