ALBAY Rep. Edcel Lagman yesterday said an existing law mandates the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to allow the registration of new voters until January 2022, or 120 days before the May 9, 2022 synchronized elections.
Stressing that the poll body has no right to refuse to extend the period for voters list up, Lagman said Republic Act No. 8189, entitled “The Voter’s Registration Act of 1996,” which he principally authored, laid down a system of continuing registration of voters.
Section 8 of the law provides: “The personal filing of application of registration of voters shall be conducted daily in the office of the Election Officer during regular office hours. No registration shall, however, be conducted during the period starting one hundred twenty (120) days before a regular election and ninety (90) days before a special election.”
“The stalling of the voter’s registration due to the pandemic makes the implementation of RA 8189 more reasonable and critical,” said the opposition lawmaker who is a member of the Liberal Party.
He added that the Supreme Court, in the case of Kabataan party-list vs. Comelec, has upheld the implementation of Section 8 of RA 8189 for the May 2010 regular elections.
Because of this, Lagman said there is no more need to pass House Bill No. 10261 and Senate Bill No. 2408 mandating the Comelec to extend voter’s registration to by a month.
Lagman said that if the said bills were to be enacted into law, the period for the continuing registration of voters will be shortened to October 31, 2021, instead of January 9, 2022 for the May 2022 elections, and for all subsequent elections because of the repealing clauses in said bills.
Speaker Lord Allan Jay Velasco, along with majority leader Martin Romualdez and Minority Leader Joseph Stephen Paduano filed HBN 10261 last week to prevent “massive voter disenfranchisement” brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Senate, senators yesterday unanimously approved on final reading the proposed SBN 2408.
The approval of SBN 2408, which was authored by Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri, comes two days before the end of the registration period on September 30.
In a hearing last Friday, Comelec chairman Sheriff Abas said extending the deadline for voters registration by one month would affect other calendared activities, such as the printing of ballots for the 2022 polls.
In seeking an extension of the list up period, lawmakers have cited the pause in registration activities because of the lockdowns imposed by the national and local governments to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
An extension, they argued, is needed to prevent the disfranchisement of those who failed to register.
Emerging from a meeting of the top officials of the Comelec, Elections spokesman spokesman James Jimenez said the management committee will submit its recommendation on the proposals to extend the registration period to the en banc on Wednesday. — With Ashzel Hachero and Gerard Naval
