Young registrants overwhelm Comelec staff in Iloilo

ILOILO CITY—Several voter registrants fainted while hundreds had to be turned away as nearly 4,000 teenagers flocked to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) here on Sunday and overwhelmed its staff.

“Our office could not accommodate such a number of people, so we had to tell them to return in the succeeding days,” election assistant Jonathan Sayno told the Inquirer.  The Comelec office is on the second floor of the Iloilo Terminal Market building, which also houses the offices of the city prosecutor.

The crowd included around 500 registrants for the barangay (village) elections and at least 3,200 for the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections on Oct. 28. The nationwide registration of new voters started on July 22 and will end on July 31.

As many of the registrants arrived early in the morning and reached the building entrance on the first floor, railings had to be put up to control the crowd, Sayno said.

While the SK registrants (at least 15 years old but less than 18 years old on Election Day) do not require biometric scanning, they must fill up application forms to determine their eligibility to vote. Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Inquirer Visayas