Comelec resumes voter registration for barangay, SK polls

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will resume voter registration from July 4 to 23 for the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections on Dec. 5 this year.

Comelec offices will be open Mondays to Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to receive personal applications from previously unregistered voters who are eligible to vote in the barangay and SK elections.

John Rex Laudiangco, spokesperson for the Comelec, said the voter registration period would last less than a month due to the prohibitions of Republic Act No. 8189, or the General Registration of Voters Act of 1996, which prohibits voter registration activities within 120 days prior to elections.

Since the barangay and SK elections are set on Dec. 5, the start of the prohibition is on Aug. 7, Laudiangco said.

But he said the Comelec would use the period from July 24 to Aug. 6 to complete the voter registration process, which includes the publication of the names of applicants, conducting election registration board hearings, verifying applicants with the database and approving the list of polling precincts and clustering of precincts as necessary.

“We still have several postregistration activities and requirements that need to be given ample time,” Laudiangco said.

The Comelec said it would receive applications for reactivation of registration from July 4 to July 19, though applicants have to send their applications to the official email address of the office of the election officer in their locality.

The Comelec will also accept applications for transfer, change/correction of entries in the registration records, reinstatement of name in the list of voters and transfer of registration records from a foreign post to a local one.

The Comelec has projected that the total registered voters for the barangay polls will reach 66,053,357. A record 65,745,529 were registered locally to vote in the May 9 general elections.

For the SK elections, the Comelec projected total registered voters to reach 23,059,227. The total registered youth voters in the May 2018 barangay and SK elections was 20.6 million.

Regular voters should be at least 18 years old. On the other hand, SK voters should be at least 15 years old but not more than 30 years old on the day of the elections.

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