Thread by @cnnphilippines

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PH ambassador to New Zealand Gary Domingo says the source of the ballot “deliberately edited” has been already traced but cannot reveal where it is exactly.

Domingo says he will leave it to the Comelec to disclose anything any further.

Domingo: We’ve had many of our voters say their ballots were complete. We have already begun to receive ballots… Twice a week we feed allots in our vote counting machines.

Domingo says they have nearly 30,000 registered voters within their jurisdiction.

Domingo: Comelec gives us very strict guidelines which we follow religiously. There are many safeguard procedures, we have poll watchers who observe. Like the social media unboxing that you get.

Domingo: We had something called the final testing and sealing, where we do a final run of the testing of the vote counting machines where we have accredited observers among the Filipino community. This was done last April 18.

Domingo: We’ve been delayed. What we see as a challenge now is for enough turnaround time for the voter to receive his or ballot and to mail it back to us on time.

Domingo: One reason why we had a delay because of public clamor to move the deadline.

Domingo says the basic problem in the OAV in New Zealand is that the ballots are sent in bulk through the post, and they still have to process them and send them out.

The main challenge they see is the turn-around time.

Domingo: One of the other slight challenge is the change of address.

https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines/status/1518579691891744768

Domingo says there is a large percentage of those who register but don’t actually vote for some reason.

Domingo says that out of 80,000 Filipinos voting in New Zealand including Pacific Island countries, he says they have registered 29,304 Filipinos.

However, they only got about 4,400 total of actual voters.

Political analyst Antonio Contreras on recent endorsements for VP Leni Robredo: It may be too late in the game. A lot of people have made up their minds and if you look at the survey results… you’re going to see, Marcos’ numbers are even edging up.

Contreras: The pattern is there. There is very little number to draw from if you're going to convert and the endorsements, I’m not sure they will lead to conversion when there is very few undecided and the margin is too far.

Contreras on celebrity endorsements: Based on our survey… the influence of celebrities, even politicians, relatives, not too much into the decision of people and more so now that people have made up their minds.

Contreras: We don't have data just because an actress or actor or sports person endorsed a candidate--and I'm not just talking about Leni-- we are assuming that it works.

Contreras on Manila Mayor Isko Moreno’s tirades: It could backfire on him but the question is will Leni benefit from it. If people move away from Isko, to whom are they moving? Those voting for Isko, who are their second choices?

Contreras on Marcos Jr.'s tax liabilities, important presidential debates impact: If you look at numbers, again of scientific surveys, it mean they do not have an effect.

Contreras: It looks like the unity talks among the opposition is practically dead... I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Contreras: Maybe people are so fed off with this. I've talked to some people they say it didn't work before, it's not working now.

https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines/status/1518584894263242752

Contreras: And maybe this is also one of the things that might be the downside of the political opposition. They focused so much on the negatives of Marcos when they know people don't care about it.

Do you think this is the election that surveys will be proven wrong?

Contreras: Surveys are scientific tools if only one of them is saying this is going to happen then I would suspect this is something you have to doubt.

Contreras: But if all of the will say there is a person who is running away with a big margin then as a scientist… then I will do a disservice to my discipline if I will say don’t believe it.

https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines/status/1518585566056443905

The Ocean Cleanup CEO Boyan Slat says their mission in Ocean Cleanup is to rid the world's oceans of plastics, by stopping plastics in rivers before they reach the ocean.

Slat says will all their efforts, they aim to clean the oceans by the end of the decade.

Slat on the areas that they have started cleaning up: I said 1% of the world's rivers do 80% of the pollution but those 1% still accounts for a thousand rivers. We have to go global.

Slat: Most is actually coming from Southeast Asia, and interestingly, the Philippines is a top-scorer in that list.

https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines/status/1518586905448697856

Slat: Our first is interceptors which are solar powered devices which we put in the mouth of these rivers.We have placed in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Dominican Republic. But soon we hope to spread this to many more countries around the world.

Slat says few of the most polluted rivers in the world are in the Philippines, like Pasig River.

Slat says they are open to partner with local authorities and companies to help in cleaning up rivers in the Philippines.

Slat says one way a person can help in protecting our oceans is by taking care of their own waste.