It was a midterm election—the officials elected were sworn in on June 30, 2013, midway through President Benigno Aquino III's term of office.

This allowed the commission to impose prohibitions on 24 activities, including a nationwide ban on guns and other deadly weapons on that day.

The COMELEC resolution stipulated that online propaganda can only be published on a website thrice a week, and allows advertisements in the form of pop-ups, banners and the like.

[13] The commission, in a cost-saving measure, announced on January 18 that they ruled to use plastic seals with serial numbers instead of padlocks in securing ballot boxes.

Chairman Sixto Brillantes remarked that padlocks are bulky and expensive, as compared to plastic seals cannot be tampered with and are cheaper.

[16] On mid-April, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on limiting the airtime of political advertisements by candidates by the Commission on Elections.

Voting 9–6, the high court favored the petition by Team PNoy senatorial candidate Alan Peter Cayetano to halt the implementation of Resolution No.

Sixto Brillantes, dismayed and the high court rulings adverse to the election commission threatened to resign but later relented after a meeting with President Aquino.

[21] On early May, senatorial candidate Richard Gordon petitioned to the Supreme Court the commission to order the latter to reveal the source code to local review groups.

Gordon, who authored the law mandating the automated elections, said that the commission does not have the discretion on whether or not political parties can review the source code.

[22] A few days after Gordon's petition, or exactly a week before the election, Brillantes announced that Smartmatic and Dominion signed an agreement releasing the source code, and that it would be presented to the public on May 8.

The source code was then burned anew to a separate CD-R, placed inside a safety box, and was delivered to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to be kept in a vault.

[27] However, the Supreme Court of the Philippines issued a restraining order reverting to the two-day liquor ban after it upheld a petition by the Food and Beverage Inc. and International Wines and Spirits Association.

[30] However, Secretary of Justice Leila de Lima expressed reservations on the constitutionality of the so-called "money ban",[31] and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has explicitly stated that it would not comply with the commission's resolution.

[33] However, the Supreme Court issued a status quo ante order against the "money ban", acting upon a petition by the Bankers Association of the Philippines.

In addition, police and military forces were put on higher alert for expectations of violence which had resulted in about 60 deaths since campaigning began.

Elections are via first past the post system: the candidate with the highest number of votes wins that district's seat in the House of Representatives.

Major parties are prohibited from running in the party-list election, which was instituted to allow marginalized sectors of society to join the political process.

[40] The Comelec claimed that the problems were caused not by the machines themselves, but by corrupted compact flash cards and issues with the cellular network coverage.

[40] Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, the Philippines' largest telecommunications company, released a statement dismissing the Comelec's allegations of cellular network problems, saying that the combined networks of Smart Communications and Sun Cellular covered every city and municipality in the country, and no unusually heavy traffic was recorded on election day.

[41] The Comelec failed to meet its self-imposed deadline of proclaiming winners in the senatorial election 48 hours after the end of the voting period.

[42] Under the law, the technical committee must have documented certification that the all hardware and software components were operating properly at least three months before the elections.