House probe of party list ‘raffle system’ sought

MANILA, Philippines — The Makabayan bloc wants a House inquiry into the process of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) raffling the names of party lists to determine their placement in the ballots during the elections.

Under House Resolution No. 1931, the Makabayan bloc said the so-called “raffle system for party lists has shifted the campaign from simply relying on the party’s name to campaigning for a specific number assigned to a particular party, which changes every election.”

The Makabayan bloc is composed of six lawmakers from Bayan Muna, ACT Teachers, Gabriela and Kabataan.

“Instead of relying on their existing advocacies as an electoral campaign strategy, a party-list now focuses instead on campaigning via its assigned number. As a result, the potential voters have difficulty relying mainly on the party list’s name, as the list of party-list candidates are shuffled,” the bloc said.

The Comelec used to list the party-list groups in alphabetical order but later issued a resolution that the order of party-list groups in the ballot would be determined through a raffle.

The lawmakers argued that the alphabetical and sequential listing of party-list groups would still be beneficial to all party-list groups because the party-list candidates could bank on their registered names.