MANILA – Millions of Filipinos queued for hours Monday to elect a new leader to replace President Rodrigo Duterte in the most sweeping election the Philippines has seen in more than three decades.
But by the time the polls closed at 7 p.m., there were reports of alarming irregularities across the country.
The government said more than 1,800 voting machines were out of order during the day and there were only 1,100 backup machines in the entire country. The number of machines that had broken down more than doubled than in the 2016 presidential election, according to local election watchdog Kontra Daya. Voters complained that their names had been omitted from the voting registration lists and that their ballots had been tampered with.
The Legal Network for Truthful Elections, an advocacy group made up of lawyers, said it observed election irregularities, electoral violations and technical problems during voting, including in 13 places where vote counting machines were malfunctioning. According to the organization, officers had seen people posing as election officials to help voters.
As night fell, the hashtag #ExtendVotingHoursPH was trending on Twitter.
The vote count will begin at 1 p.m. on Tuesday and a winner is expected to be announced in the coming days. In previous elections, officials from rural provinces with poor internet connections had to physically transport the counted ballots to the capital Manila.
In an afternoon news conference, George Garcia, an election commissioner, said there was no reason to expand voting across the country as the long waits in some areas were likely related to power cuts, which were minimal and had already been resolved. .
The election presents this nation of 110 million people with a stark choice to replace Mr. Duterte: Leni Robredo, the country’s vice president, who has served as control over Mr. Duterte, or Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the dictator who was deposed in 1986.
Ms. Robredo said her campaign had set up a hotline to receive complaints and put lawyers on standby so people could report anything suspicious. “We don’t want the integrity of the election to be compromised because that would create confusion,” she told reporters earlier Monday. “We hope that the authorities can show that they are on top of the situation, because that is what public confidence depends on.”