Public Advisory

029-2022
12 April 2022

ON ALLEGED INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE FOR RETURN ENVELOPES CONTAINING BALLOTS OF OVERSEAS VOTERS IN THE UNITED STATES

The Philippine Consulate General in New York has been made aware of a social media post that is circulating alleging that a foreign service post in the United States had sent out election packets to registered voters containing return envelopes with insufficient postage.
 
The said social media post claimed that as a result of the insufficient postage, envelopes containing ballots would not be delivered. The same post irresponsibly claimed undelivered ballots would be substituted. Unfortunately, said post did not provide any proof for us to look into said claim.
 
We would like to assure our kababayan that election packets and the return envelopes containing ballots that were sent to them have sufficient postage. We went twice to the Post Office—on Monday afternoon before we mailed the initial batch of ballots and again on Tuesday morning—to have the election packets and return envelopes weighed to ensure these have the correct stamps.
 
We are committed to ensuring that all qualified members of the Filipino Community get to exercise their right to vote. While we welcome the vigilance of kababayan in ensuring that the elections would be credible, we also would like to request them to exercise prudence when posting in social media so as not to put doubts on the credibility of the overseas elections process.