WITH barely three months left before the end of the overseas voter registration period for the 2025 polls, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday rued the continued low number of applicants among Filipinos abroad.
In a press conference after the signing of the contract for the Online Voting and Counting System (OVCS), Elections chairman George Garcia said that voter registration among Filipinos abroad remain at around 200,000.
“We have been holding overseas voter registration since last year (December 2022) and it is saddening that only almost 200,000 have registered as additional overseas voters,” said Garcia.
He said it is equally lamentable that the 1.697 million registered overseas Filipino voters in the May 2022 polls has gone down after hundreds of thousands were deactivated.
“At present, our registered overseas voters is at 1.17 million. What happened to the others? They were deactivated after failing to vote in two successive elections,” said Garcia.
The poll chief said the numbers are still a far cry from their goal to enlist a total of three million Filipinos abroad.
“We are really hoping and targeting that we will have 3 million (overseas voters),” said Garcia.
In a bid to reach, if not inch closer, to their target number, Garcia said they are banking on the forthcoming use of the OVCS by the Comelec.
“We will have a massive voters education campaign with regards to internet voting. We will incorporate overseas voter registration with it… It is our hope that by announcing internet voting, the interest to vote will increase,” he said.
This was supported by the Comelec’s OVCS service provider, the Joint Venture (JV) of SMS Global Technologies, Inc. & Sequent Tech Inc., who expressed willingness to assist the poll body.
“By educating overseas Filipinos, we are hoping the registration will be much more aggressive. Before, you need to visit the embassy twice, to register and to vote. Now, you’ll only have to go once, to register. We will do our best to help in the information campaign,” said SMS President Anthony Angeles.
The overseas voter registration period for the 2025 polls will end on September 30, 2024.
In tapping the SMS-Sequent JV, the Comelec will be introducing the OVCS to overseas voters, who have been casting their votes either via postal or personal voting.
In his speech, Garcia noted how this will mark the first time that the internet voting system will be utilized in the country.
“This is the start of our journey. Internet voting will be used for the first time in our history. Hopefully, this will be heard by all Filipinos abroad,” he said.
“This will give you the opportunity to vote without the need to go to embassies, get mailed with ballots in envelopes. Using only our cellphone, laptop, or ipad, we can already cast our votes,” he added.
The SMS-Sequent JV, for its part, assured the public that their system is fully secured amid threats of hacking activities.
“The votes are encrypted, private, and the process from the beginning when you cast the ballot to the end when you have the results is verifiable from beginning to end,” said Sequent Chief Technology Officer Eduardo Robles.
As to the low bidding price of the company for the project with an original budget amounting to P465 million, Robles said there is nothing extraordinary with their P100 million bid offer.
“We have ran elections in other countries and the price we are using here is the same kind of prices we have used in other places. I don’t think it will make sense to do otherwise,” said Robles.
The overseas voting period for the 2025 polls will run from April 13, 2025 to May 12, 2025.
