Civil registrars vow to help put ‘ghost voters’ to rest

Comelec headquarters

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will no longer have to pay extra to cleanse the voters’ list after civil registrars across the country promised to regularly update the poll body about voters who have died and should be removed from voters’ lists.

After their weekly meeting on Wednesday, the Comelec announced that the Philippine Association of Civil Registrars (PACR) has committed to send regular reports on recently deceased persons.

The meeting was held after Comelec Chair George Garcia said last month that the continued inclusion of a number of deceased people in the voters’ list was already a “cause of serious concern.”

“The PACR National Directorate committed, through its nationwide membership, full compliance [with] the law by providing, on a monthly basis, a certified list of persons who died during the previous month to the election officer of the place where the deceased are registered, at no cost to the Commission,” said poll spokesperson Rex Laudiangco.

He was referring to Republic Act No. 8189, or the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003, on the general registration of voters.

Laudiangco, who concurrently heads the Comelec law department, said deceased voters have remained in the voters’ list due to the failure of city or municipal civil registrars to regularly provide the Comelec with information on deceased residents.

Laudiangco said the Comelec had to pay the Philippine Statistics Authority P5 per request for every death certificate in order to make up for the lack of regular reports from the civil registrar offices.

He also said the Comelec will set up a database that can be accessed by all authorized users from the PACR National Directorate and the Comelec.

The total registered voters as of the May 2022 presidential and general elections was 67,525,619, with at least 3 million more new voters who registered after the elections.

READ: Comelec to public: Help rid records of ‘ghost voters’