MANILA — Millions of Filipinos stood in line for hours on Monday to pick a new leader to replace President Rodrigo Duterte in the most consequential election that the Philippines has seen in more than three decades.
But by the time polls closed at 7 p.m., accounts of alarming irregularities had been reported across the country.
The government said more than 1,800 voting machines had malfunctioned during the day, and that there were only 1,100 backup machines nationwide. The number of machines that had broken down was more than double than in the 2016 presidential election, according to a local election watchdog, Kontra Daya. Voters complained that their names had been left off voting registration rolls and that their ballots had been tampered with.
The Legal Network for Truthful Elections, an advocacy group made up of lawyers, said it had observed election irregularities, election offenses and technical problems during voting, including in 13 places where vote-counting machines had malfunctioned. Its officers had seen people masquerading as election officials to assist voters, according to the organization.
As night fell, the hashtag #ExtendVotingHoursPH was trending on Twitter.
Vote counting will start Tuesday at 1 p.m., and a winner is expected to be announced in the coming days. In previous elections, officials from rural provinces with poor internet connections have had to physically transport counted ballots to Manila, the capital.
In a news conference in the afternoon, George Garcia, an elections commissioner, said there was no reason to extend voting nationwide since the long waits in some areas likely had to do with power outages, which were minimal and had already been resolved.
The election presents this country of 110 million people with a stark choice to replace Mr. Duterte: Leni Robredo, the country’s vice president, who has served as a check on Mr. Duterte, or Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the dictator who was ousted in 1986.
Ms. Robredo said her campaign had set up a hotline to receive complaints and placed lawyers on standby for people to report anything suspicious. “We do not want the integrity of the elections to be compromised, because that is when confusion arises,” she told reporters earlier Monday. “We hope that the authorities can show that they are on top of the situation, because public trust relies on that.”
