Electoral Commission

Also known as: The Electoral Commission of the 1935 Constitution — the styling that fixes the charter and era · The Assembly's Electoral Commission — the contest forum of the unicameral National Assembly · Not to be confused with the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) — the independent commission the 1940 amendments created in its place and which still administers Philippine elections · Not to be confused with the Senate Electoral Tribunal and the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal — the post-1940 bodies that inherited the contest jurisdiction

Society

Definition

The Electoral Commission was the constitutional organ created by Article VI, Section 4 of the 1935 Constitution of the Philippines — the body to which the Commonwealth’s first charter transferred the power to judge disputed seats in the National Assembly, taking that power out of the legislature itself. The section, as quoted verbatim by the Supreme Court in Angara v. Electoral Commission, read: “SEC. 4. There shall be an Electoral Commission composed of three Justice of the Supreme Court designated by the Chief Justice, and of six Members chosen by the National Assembly, three of whom shall be nominated by the party having the largest number of votes, and three by the party having the second largest number of votes therein. The senior Justice in the Commission shall be its Chairman. The Electoral Commission shall be the sole judge of all contests relating to the election, returns and qualifications of the members of the National Assembly.” (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission) Historical register; defunct — the Commission functioned from the First National Assembly of 1935 until the 1940 constitutional amendments replaced it.

The Commission is the body that decided Angara v. Electoral Commission (G.R. No. L-45081, promulgated July 15, 1936), the decision that founded Philippine judicial review: the Court held the Commission “a constitutional creation, invested with the necessary authority,” separate from and independent of the legislature, while ruling that “although the Electoral Commission may not be interfered with, when and while acting within the limits of its authority,” it remains subject to the Constitution, its acts “however illegal or unconstitutional” open to challenge in appropriate cases. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission) It must not be confused with the modern Commission on Elections (COMELEC) — the independent three-member commission created by the constitutional amendments ratified in the plebiscites of June 18, 1940 and written into Article X of the amended charter — nor with the Electoral Tribunals of the Senate and House, to which the same amendments transferred the contest jurisdiction, each “composed of nine Members, three of whom shall be Justices of the Supreme Court to be designated by the Chief Justice, and the remaining six shall be Members of the Senate or the House of Representatives.” (Wikipedia — 1940 plebiscites, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article; the body is described within the history of the Commission on Elections (Philippines) article as “an electoral commission composed of three justices of the Supreme Court and six members of the National Assembly”
Wikidata	N/A — no entity matching the body (search verified)
DBpedia	N/A — no resource data returned for Electoral_Commission_(Philippines) this session
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — LC authorities unreachable this session
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Electoral Commission 1935 Constitution Philippines Article VI Section 4 National Assembly sole judge election contests three justices six members Angara v Electoral Commission G.R. L-45081 judicial review 1940 amendments Commission on Elections
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

The Electoral Commission of the 1935 Constitution — the styling that fixes the charter and era
The Assembly’s Electoral Commission — the contest forum of the unicameral National Assembly
Not to be confused with the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) — the independent commission the 1940 amendments created in its place and which still administers Philippine elections
Not to be confused with the Senate Electoral Tribunal and the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal — the post-1940 bodies that inherited the contest jurisdiction

Examples and Analogies

A bench inside the legislature: the Commission married a judicial bench to a party-balanced legislative panel — three justices designated by the Chief Justice with the senior justice presiding, and six assemblymen split evenly between the two largest parties — so that no majority could judge its own members alone. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
The clock the Commission set: its own rules of December 9, 1935 fixed the deadline for election protests, and the litigation that reached the Supreme Court turned on that clock — the Assembly’s December 3 confirmation of the Tayabas returns could not close what the Commission’s December 9 rules had left open until that day. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Verified constitutional and case data:
Charter provision: Article VI, Section 4 of the 1935 Constitution, quoted verbatim above; members designated December 4 and 6, 1935, first meeting and rules December 9, 1935 (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Predecessor regime: section 18 of the Jones Law had made each house of the Philippine Legislature the sole judge of its members’ elections, with section 478 of Act No. 3387 letting each house prescribe contest deadlines — the arrangement the 1935 Charter replaced (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
The landmark contest: election of September 17, 1935, First District of Tayabas; Jose A. Angara proclaimed October 7 over Pedro Ynsua; Assembly Resolution No. 8 of December 3; Ynsua’s December 8 protest — the only one entered after the Commission sat; motion to dismiss denied January 23, 1936; prohibition denied July 15, 1936, Justice Laurel writing (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Replacement: amendments ratified in the plebiscites of June 18, 1940 — an independent Commission on Elections of a chairman and two members (Article X of the amended charter) and per-house Electoral Tribunals of nine members each (Article VI, Section 11) (Wikipedia — 1940 plebiscites, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

Usage Scenarios

1. Adjudicating Assembly Election Contests, 1935–1941

The Commission’s working business was the protest: after each National Assembly election, losing candidates filed with the Commission, whose rules fixed the filing window and whose decisions on the returns and qualifications of assemblymen were final within its jurisdiction — the docket that produced Angara. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)

2. Studying the Founding of Philippine Judicial Review

The Commission is inseparable from the case that made it famous: Angara established that the Court may examine the acts of a coordinate constitutional organ, on the ground that the judiciary is the organ called on to determine the proper allocation of powers — the decision this wiki’s entry on the case treats in full. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)

3. Teaching Constitutional Design

Comparative courses use the Commission as a study in insulation: the 1935 Charter moved the contest power from each house (the Jones Law rule) to a mixed commission with a judicial chairman and a party-balanced bench — design answered, and superseded, by the 1940 amendments. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

4. Tracing Institutional Succession

Legal historians begin the COMELEC’s pedigree here: a statutory commission of 1940 supervising that December’s elections, constitutional status with the ratified amendments, and the permanent Article X commission — while the contest jurisdiction went separately to the Electoral Tribunals, both descending from the 1935 body. (Wikipedia — Commission on Elections (Philippines), Wikipedia — 1940 plebiscites)

Strategies

Balance by construction: the three-three split of the assembly seats between the two largest parties, with three justices holding the balance and the senior justice in the chair, was the Charter’s arithmetic answer to majority-party judging. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Transfer the power whole: the Court read Section 4 as a complete transfer of the contest jurisdiction from the legislature, impliedly displacing the Jones Law and Election Law provisions — statutory silence resolved by constitutional structure. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Rules as incidental power: the Commission’s authority to prescribe the time for filing protests was held incidental to its constitutional grant — the practical instrument through which it controlled its own docket. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Insulation through tenure elsewhere: the 1940 redesign replaced mixed membership with a small independent commission enjoying staggered nine-year terms removable only by impeachment — the successor’s answer to the same insulation problem. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

Security and Safety Measures

Judicial review as the boundary safeguard: the Commission could not be interfered with within its authority, but its acts, “however illegal or unconstitutional,” could be challenged in appropriate cases — the constitutional boundary enforced by the courts. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Deadline rules against stale contests: the Commission’s protest window — December 9, 1935 in the first session — protected returned members from indefinite exposure to post-confirmation protests, the safeguard the Assembly tried to strengthen by its own resolution. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
Deference inside, review at the boundary: the Angara rule forbids courts from supervising the Commission’s discretion while permitting review of jurisdictional excess — the balance that keeps electoral adjudication both independent and under law. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)
For researchers: quote the original Section 4 from the Angara report — LawPhil’s consolidated 1935 Constitution page carries the amended text (Article X COMELEC; Article VI Electoral Tribunals), not the unicameral-era section the Commission was born under. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

Historical Context

The 1934 Constitutional Convention wrote the Commission into the new charter against the practice it knew: under the Jones Law, each house of the Philippine Legislature had been sole judge of its members’ elections, with section 478 of Act No. 3387 letting each house set its own contest deadlines. The 1935 Constitution vested the power instead in a standing commission — three justices designated by Chief Justice Ramón Avanceña, six assemblymen chosen on party lines, the senior justice presiding. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)

The First National Assembly elected on September 17, 1935 supplied the Commission’s first test: its members were designated December 4 and 6, its rules adopted December 9, and Ynsua’s protest against Angara — filed December 8, after the Assembly’s December 3 confirmation — produced the collision of organs the new charter had made possible, resolved by the Supreme Court on July 15, 1936 in the decision that installed judicial review at the Commonwealth’s beginning. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission) The arrangement lasted one charter revision: in the plebiscites of June 18, 1940 the electorate ratified the creation of an independent Commission on Elections — alongside the restoration of the Senate and the four-year presidential term — and the amended charter’s Article X commission and Article VI Electoral Tribunals replaced the Assembly-era body, whose contest docket and doctrine passed to the successors that administer and adjudicate Philippine elections today. (Wikipedia — 1940 plebiscites, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended), Wikipedia — Commission on Elections (Philippines))

Challenges and Controversies

The Collision with the Assembly

The Commission’s defining controversy was structural: the Assembly’s Resolution No. 8 confirming the Tayabas returns against a protest the Commission’s rules still allowed — the legislature asserting a confirmation power against the organ the Constitution had made “the sole judge” of the same contests. The Court resolved it for the Commission, at the price of establishing the Court’s own authority to say so. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)

Legislators Judging Legislators

The design kept six of nine seats in the hands of sitting assemblymen, balanced by party arithmetic and a judicial chair — insulation by composition rather than by independence from the political branches. The 1940 amendments did not preserve the body: they split its jurisdiction to tribunals still mixing justices and legislators, but gave election administration to a commission of no sitting politicians — the framers’ second thoughts made constitutional text. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution (as amended))

Judicial Supremacy’s Price

Angara‘s holding that the judiciary determines the proper allocation of powers made the referee’s commission itself the standing controversy of Philippine constitutional law — the power claimed in 1936 over a nine-member electoral body remains the doctrine argued over at every high-politics case since. (LawPhil — Angara v. Electoral Commission)