Comelec will stop deactivation of voters
Posted on October 8th, 2009
Upon the recommendation of the Election and Barangay Affairs Division (EBAD), the Commission on Election decided to stop the disenfranchisement of registrants. This will make the Comelec stop the deactivation of voters who failed to take part in the midterm and Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections in 2007.
EBAD director Teopisto Elnas said in his letter to the commission dated September 8, 2009, the deactivated voters would not be able to reactivate their registration in time for the October 31 deadline of voters’ registration for the May 2010 local and national elections.
Elnas based his recommendation on the Elections Officers’ Quarterly Progress Reports which show that there still field offices that have backlogs in reactivating proceedings up to July 2009.
As of date, the Comelec has already deactivated 5,606,964 voters. From this figure, the 5,603,154 were those who were not able to participate in the 2007 election; the 1,665 were because of their renouncement of their Filipino citizenship; the 1,071 were because of court exclusion; 947 were due to incarceration for no less than one year; 115 for commission of crime of disloyalty to the Philippine government; and 12 for insanity or incompetence.
The Comelec also reported that the highest number of registrants so far is from the region of Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon) which has 6,059,168. Metro Manila comes at second with 5,347,646, while Central Luzon comes in at third with 5,098,495 registrants. The lowest number of registrants comes from the Cordillera Autonomous Region which as only 809,979 registrants.
The Comelec record shows that there are now 45.4 million registered voters in the country. From this number, 2.6 million are new voters. The commission is expecting the number of voter registration to reach 48 million before the October 31 deadline.
