Voter registration in Cebu dropped by over 50% due to COVID curbs

CEBU CITY — Voter registration dropped by more than half in the vote-rich province of Cebu due to restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Provincial Elections Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano said that in the month of August alone, the registration in all the 54 local governments in Cebu island dropped from 3,000 a day in previous months to only 700 people per day in August.

Castillano said most of the highly populated areas such as the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapu-Lapu suspended their voter’s registration when these areas were placed under modified enhanced community quarantine in August.

The election official, however, was hopeful that they can still make up for the lost time as mall-based satellite voters registration is now in full swing in Cebu. Deadline for registration for the May 9, 2022, polls is on September 30.

Thousands of applicants for registration were already observed mostly in the three major malls in Cebu City.

The Comelec Cebu province recorded about 26,309 new voters from August 2 to September 11 in the entire island.

In the 2019 polls, the entire island of Cebu had a voting population of over 3.3 million, the highest among all the provinces in the country.