ABS-CBN - Thursday, September 24
MANILA - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has purged the voters' list of some 5 million names, in what could be a major step in solving multiple voting on election day. Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento told a workshop on “Philippine democracy and the 2010 Elections” that the massive clean-up has resulted in 5,584,449 names being stricken off from the voters' list.
He said the deactivated names include those who have failed to vote in two major elections, those who have adopted foreign citizenship, those who have been convicted by the courts, and those who are dead.
In contrast, there were 2,653,594 newly registered voters as of June 30, with the total number of registered voters nationwide already breaching the 44 million mark.
He expected the number of registered voters to reach 47 million, noting the active efforts to encourage eligible voters to register with the help of the media and the election watchdogs.
ABS-CBN News, for instance, has its Boto Mo, Ipatrol Mo project, to encourage the youth to register and vote.
Under the continuing registration program, voters have until October 31 this year to register to be able to vote in the May 10, 2010 polls.
Sarmiento said the election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) will be provided a copy of the voters' list.
Exclusion or inclusion proceedings will commence after the voters' list has been closed.
Weakness and embarrassment
The voters' list has been one of the Comelec’s weaknesses and sources of embarrassment. It has long been under suspicion of being padded or bloated, intentionally or unintentionally, providing wider elbowroom for cheats to pull off their dirty tricks.
Critics have said that a clean and honest electoral exercise should begin with a clean voters' list.
Previous efforts to cleanse the voters' list, with billions of pesos spent for it, have gone to waste.
The Comelec, chaired by former Justice Jose Melo, is now implementing the biometric system to further eliminate dubious names in the voters' list.
In the biometric system, the photograph, signature and thumbmark of voters are taken and compared using the cross-matching machines. This should eliminate double or multiple registrations.
The project, however, could not go full blast “for lack of equipment,” Sarmiento said. -- by Aries Rufo, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak
MANILA - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has purged the voters' list of some 5 million names, in what could be a major step in solving multiple voting on election day. Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento told a workshop on “Philippine democracy and the 2010 Elections” that the massive clean-up has resulted in 5,584,449 names being stricken off from the voters' list.
He said the deactivated names include those who have failed to vote in two major elections, those who have adopted foreign citizenship, those who have been convicted by the courts, and those who are dead.
In contrast, there were 2,653,594 newly registered voters as of June 30, with the total number of registered voters nationwide already breaching the 44 million mark.
He expected the number of registered voters to reach 47 million, noting the active efforts to encourage eligible voters to register with the help of the media and the election watchdogs.
ABS-CBN News, for instance, has its Boto Mo, Ipatrol Mo project, to encourage the youth to register and vote.
Under the continuing registration program, voters have until October 31 this year to register to be able to vote in the May 10, 2010 polls.
Sarmiento said the election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) will be provided a copy of the voters' list.
Exclusion or inclusion proceedings will commence after the voters' list has been closed.
Weakness and embarrassment
The voters' list has been one of the Comelec’s weaknesses and sources of embarrassment. It has long been under suspicion of being padded or bloated, intentionally or unintentionally, providing wider elbowroom for cheats to pull off their dirty tricks.
Critics have said that a clean and honest electoral exercise should begin with a clean voters' list.
Previous efforts to cleanse the voters' list, with billions of pesos spent for it, have gone to waste.
The Comelec, chaired by former Justice Jose Melo, is now implementing the biometric system to further eliminate dubious names in the voters' list.
In the biometric system, the photograph, signature and thumbmark of voters are taken and compared using the cross-matching machines. This should eliminate double or multiple registrations.
The project, however, could not go full blast “for lack of equipment,” Sarmiento said. -- by Aries Rufo, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak