The Commission on Elections vigorously abhors any malicious move to disrupt the May 14, 2007 Elections, including the conduct of local absentee voting for the members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police and the deputized agencies of the Commission. It denounces further any act that tends to malign its relentless efforts to hold free, honest, orderly and credible elections.

Thus, in response to the perturbing 19 April 2007 headline of Malaya, “Rigging of soldiers’ absentee ballots bared”, Commissioner Florentino A. Tuason, Jr., Chairman of the Committee on Local Absentee Voting, immediately requested Senatorial candidate Loren B. Legarda to furnish the Commission copies of the reports she allegedly received from her sources to formally commence the conduct of an investigation on the issue. Legarda stated in Malaya that “she has received reports that absentee voting forms for the members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines have been filled-up with the 12 Team Unity candidates”.

Commissioner Tuason emphasized that as of today, no single official local absentee ballot has been transmitted yet to the qualified applicants for local absentee voting since the Committee on Local Absentee Voting is still in the process of editing and generating the lists of approved applicants per requesting office, unit or command, as well as acting on the applications belatedly filed pursuant to COMELEC Resolution No. 7848. Thus, such “absentee voting forms” allegedly containing the names of the 12 Team Unity candidates is totally baseless and a fabrication.

Legarda quoted a soldier saying that “[t]hey just want us to sign the ballots”. It must be noted however that in the specifications and sample form of the official local absentee voting ballot approved by the Commission En Banc per COMELEC Resolution No. 07-0127 on 25 January 2007, the voters should write nothing thereon, not even their initials or signatures, except the names of candidates they wish to vote.