Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 87
In forceAn Act Removing the “None of the Above” Option from the Official Ballot in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, Amending for the Purpose Section 14, Article Vii of Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 35, Otherwise Known as the “Bangsamoro Electoral Code of 2023”
Official ballots carry the names of candidates, and party logos for political party representatives — and nothing else. Any ballot design including a “None of the Above” choice must be revised.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This takes a choice off the ballot. Under the Bangsamoro Electoral Code of 2023 a voter in a parliamentary election could mark “None of the Above” — a formal way of saying that none of the candidates offered was acceptable. This act removes it.
What remains is prescribed exactly: the ballot contains the names of the candidates, and for political party representatives the logos of their parties. Section 2 then directs the Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, to cause the immediate revision of the official ballots so that no ballot includes the option.
It takes effect immediately on publication rather than after the customary 15 days.
Why it was proposed
The act does not say. It carries no declaration of policy, no explanatory section, and no recital of the problem it addresses — which is unusual: nearly every other act in this registry opens by grounding itself in the Organic Law and stating what it is for. Here the reader is given the change and the implementing instruction, and nothing else.
Who it affects
- Every voter in a Bangsamoro parliamentary election.
- Voters who would have used the option to register rejection of the whole field, and who now have no equivalent on the ballot.
- Candidates and political parties, none of whom can now be outpolled by a rejection option.
- COMELEC and the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, which must revise the ballots immediately.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, which must cause the immediate revision of official ballots
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing, and does not address the cost of revising ballots already designed or printed.
What changes if it becomes law
- The “None of the Above” option disappears from parliamentary ballots.
- The ballot's contents are fixed by statute: candidate names, plus party logos for party representatives.
- The provision is moved within the Electoral Code, from Section 14 of Chapter 1 to Section 1 of Chapter 2 of Article VII.
- Ballots must be revised immediately rather than at the next printing cycle.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
A “None of the Above” option does one thing no other ballot choice can: it separates the voter who rejects every candidate from the voter who could not be bothered. Abstention and a spoiled ballot both read as absence; the option reads as a verdict. Removing it does not change how anyone is elected — it changes what the record is capable of showing about the electorate's opinion of the field, and the act supplies nothing in its place.
The silence about why is the striking part. Almost every act in this registry opens by naming the Organic Law provision it rests on and the problem it addresses. This one opens by amending a section number. For a measure that narrows what a voter may do, in a region approaching its first parliamentary elections under its own Electoral Code, the absence of any stated rationale is itself worth recording — a reader who wants to know the reasoning will not find it in the law.
Two further markers. The act takes effect immediately on publication, skipping the fifteen-day wait almost every other act observes, and it directs *immediate* ballot revision — both suggesting a change made against an election timetable. And it is signed by a different Speaker and a different Chief Minister from the acts of earlier sessions: Mohammad S. Yacob and Abdulraof A. Macacua, in place of Pangalian Balindong and Ahod Ebrahim.