FILE PHOTO: Applicants fill out forms during a voter registration drive of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in 2015. INQUIRER file photo / EDWIN BACASMAS
MANILA, Philippines — Voter registration for the 2022 national elections has surpassed the 4 million target of the country’s poll body, its official revealed Thursday.
According to Commission on Elections (Comelec) Director Teopisto Elnas Jr., their listing has to date reached 4,863,455, which include first-time voters and voters who reactivated their status. For this, he also said, the total registered voters in the country for the elections next year is now at 60 million.
“So for now, meron na tayong 60 million registered voters as of June,” Elnas said during the hearing of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms. “‘Yung target natin na 4 million, actually, lumampas na nga tayo because we already have 4,863,455 and that includes also not only first-time voters as well as re-activation of voters.”
(So for now, we have 60 million registered voters as of June. Our target of 4 million, actually, we already exceeded that because we already have 4,863,455 and that includes not only first-time voters but also re-activation of voters.)
Elnas said that of the 4,863,455, some 1.4 million were previously registered as Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) voters while around 500,000 are voters who re-activated their status. SK voters are those aged 15 to 17.
“It’s 1.4 million SK voters na (who are) automatic, ‘yung ano nila, (their) inclusion in the list of regular voters,” he explained. “Yung mga botante na na-deactivate ‘yung (Those voters who had deactivated) registration records nila tapos nag-apply sila ng (applied for) re-activation, that’s around 500,000 as of June.”
Elnas also said the 1.4 million registered voters, who are now 18 years old and above, had their biometrics captured so their data could already be migrated from the SK database to the regular election database.
“We don’t have to recapture it (biometrics) again for them to be included in the list of regular voters,” he noted. “At the time that they register to SK, na-capture na natin ang biometrics nila isa-isa, (we already captured their biometrics one by one), that includes fingerprint, face, and signature.”
Comelec’s voter registration will continue until September 30, 2021.
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