MANILA, Philippines?With only 10 days before the deadline for registration of new voters in the May elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced it had extended registration hours amid fears 1 million Filipinos may not be able to cast ballots.

Starting Thursday until Oct. 30, Comelec field offices will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Monday to Saturday to enlist new voters.

On Oct. 31, the last day of registration, Comelec offices will be open until midnight.

Last week, the Comelec allowed registration on Sundays but only in typhoon-affected areas of Luzon.

Voters? registration in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao will run daily Mondays to Sundays from Oct. 19 to Oct. 31.

Wary of disenfranchising over a million new voters, Senators Richard Gordon, Alan Peter Cayetano and Francis Pangilinan urged the Comelec to end bottlenecks at registration centers.

At a budget hearing on Tuesday, Comelec Chair Jose Melo admitted that only 2.8 million of the 4 million new voters had registered so far.

?I?m seriously appalled that there seems to be a lack of a system in trying to speed up the registration process,? Gordon said.

Pangilinan proposed extending the registration hours from 7 p.m. to midnight.

?We have received a lot of reports that in many areas around the country, people are asked to return and to come back simply because they have a priority listing number (for the day),? Pangilinan said.

Estimates could be higher

Cayetano insisted that the number of new registrations, many of whom are first time voters, could be higher than earlier estimated by Comelec.

Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) chair Henrietta de Villa said last week that her group was optimistic it would be able to get the three million target registrants by Oct. 31 on top of the 2.8 million people who had registered.

Cayetano predicted that only about 200,000 people could register at the rate that the registration process was going on.

?So possibly 1 million would be disenfranchised. They would be cheated out of the opportunity to vote,? the senator said.

In Taguig City, only 70 to as high as 200 per day are allowed to register, he said, calling the attention of Comelec officials to the presence of a ?VIP line? for supporters of Taguig Mayor Freddie Tiñga.

Cayetano said that other people were asked to come back after two or three days.

Last minute

?We expect around 500,000 people will come to register in the next 10 days,? Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez told reporters.

?We are aware that a lot of Filipinos choose to register at the last minute. So in order to accommodate them and to address the growing crowds at our field offices as we near the registration deadline, the Comelec en banc has ordered the extension of office hours in all registration centers nationwide. Registration is also extended until Sundays in calamity areas of Luzon,? Jimenez said.

62 additional machines

Jimenez also announced that the Comelec has deployed 62 additional data-capturing machines at Comelec field offices in 17 cities in Metro Manila.

?The reason why we are moving a little slowly is because there?s only one or two machines (per office) in some places which could record about 200 per day. But with the additional machines the number will jump,? he said.

Voters? validation has been suspended ?until further notice? so that Comelec could focus exclusively on the registration, Jimenez said.

He said that the Comelec?s latest updated tally in July stood at about 45 million registered voters.

?It?s somewhat smaller than what a lot of people expect. The reason for that is we have also been delisting ... We have already delisted several millions,? Jimenez said.

Remove biometrics

To speed up the process, Cayetano asked if the Comelec could remove the biometrics component of the registration process which captures information unique to individuals, including fingerprints, signatures and photos.

Of the 45.6 million voters, only 35 million of the old registrants have biometrics registration. The new registrants have biometrics.

?You can vote anyway even without the biometrics. Let them do the biometrics after the elections,? Cayetano said, explaining that the ?thumb mark is not needed for the (automated) machine.?

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento found this ?problematic,? pointing out that the law provides ?a mandatory biometrics registration.?