WITH the May 2020 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections now out of the picture, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is looking to resume the registration of voters next year.
In an interview, Elections spokesman James Jimenez said the voter registration period for the May 2022 national and local polls may resume by January.
“That may come by January. So we still have a couple of weeks more to prepare for that,” Jimenez said.
Last week, President Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11462, which moved the village and youth elections from May 2020 to the first Monday of December 2022.
The Comelec, in reaction to the signing of the law, has said it will now focus its energies on preparing for the synchronized presidential and local elections in 2022.
Asked how many new registered voters are expected to participate in the exercise, Jimenez said they are optimistic it will be more than the previous registration period.
“We have yet to come up with a target number. But we did surpass the last target that we set,” he said, adding: “Hopefully, we can have a higher number.”
During the last voter registration period held from August 1, 2019 to September 30, 2019, applications from regular registrants or those aged 18 years and above reached 3,082,396.
This is higher than the poll body’s earlier projected total number of new regular registered voters of 2,030,630.
