THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is doing a yeoman’s job in cleansing the official list of voters, in the run-up to the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE) in October.
Stricken out of the official list were the records of over 25,000 voters, the Comelec announced, the reason given being duplication or multiple entries, death, and movement of the voter. A Special Election Registration Board hearing was conducted last week to remove the multiple records from the database in preparation for the 2023 BSKE.
“Partial data as of June 23 shows that a total of 25,440 records nationwide have been deleted or abated from the National List of Registered Voters,” Comelec spokesperson Director John Rex Laudiangco said.
Cleansing the voters’ list is nothing new to the poll body. After the May 2019 midterm elections, a massive updating of the list was also undertaken. The chief of the Comelec’s Election and Barangay Affairs Department said they wanted to know how many are for deactivation, as well as those who died, based on the records of the Local Civil Registrars. In that midterm elections, the poll body said it had a total of 61,843,771 registered voters.
For those interested to know, a registered voter can be deactivated when he/she has been sentenced by final judgment to suffer imprisonment for not less than one year, for committing a crime involving disloyalty to the government, such as rebellion, sedition, violation of the anti-subversion and firearms laws, or any crime against national security; and is declared by a competent authority to be insane or incompetent.
‘In this gargantuan task of making the list of voters real, honest and credible, the Comelec will need the cooperation of the public and all government agencies.’
Those who failed to vote in two successive preceding regular elections also face deactivation, as well as voters whose registration has been ordered excluded by the court and who had lost Filipino citizenship. Registration records of those who have died as certified by the Local Civil Registrar shall also be canceled by the poll body.
In its latest cleansing of the list, the removed accounts were broken down into the following categories:
– identity of two or more per voter’s fingerprints (12,987)
– voters who transferred to another city or municipality (12,274)
– voters who failed to vote twice in the elections (2)
– voters who were reported deceased as confirmed by local civil registrars (168)
– voters with double or multiple records at the city or municipal level (9)
The Comelec said the documents will be forwarded to the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) for examination. The two organizations are duly accredited election watch groups of the poll body.
Laudiangco said the cleansing of the voters’ list will be conducted again this month, if double or multiple records still remain after the June 19, 2023 cleansing.
On the cleanup of the voters’ list, Sen. Koko Pimentel said it is important that we get the cleansing process of the voters going and finished. “The Comelec has started to do that sometime in the past and I really hope that they will be able to accomplish the objective by providing every precinct with a clean list of voters so that we can start correctly on the right foot from the very process of getting to the polls and casting their votes.”
In this gargantuan task of making the list of voters real, honest and credible, the Comelec will need the cooperation of the public and all government agencies.
