The procurement woes of the Comelec in the May 2019 elections had a backstory in an audit report the year prior. It continues to pay monthly rental for warehouse services without a valid contract. It has an overstock of paper clips, bond paper, and spiral notebooks that had been exposed to rain and the elements, and then left to rot and decay.

Problems with procurement, logistics, supply chain management, tight implementation schedules, and bad -- really bad -- project management. A series of unfortunate events turned the May 2019 elections into a messy affair.

Avoidable delays in the procurement of goods and services; the election calendar revised four times; wasteful spending on machines that conked out or were not used; massive undervoting for party-list groups. The May 2019 elections: A messy affair, not fault-free at all.

Most of the candidates are from the administration-backed Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) and the Liberal Party’s Otso Diretso. The number of candidates covered by the overview/scan reached 29 because the Pulse Asia Top 24 list had some slots occupied by more than one candidate. As a result, 13 from HNP, eight from Otso Diretso/LP, and eight from other groups or independent candidates are included in this report.