Voter registration in Negros Occidental suspended for a month

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines—The registration of voters in Negros Occidental will be suspended for more than a month because the entire staff of the Commission on Elections provincial office will man the general registration in Sulu.

Provincial elections supervisor Jessie Suarez said they will suspend the voters’ registration from June 25 to July 31 although he and 52 other Comelec personnel are scheduled to leave for Zamboanga City early July for the orientation.

He explained that before they could leave, Comelec provincial staff would have to transfer the voters’ database in Negros Occidental from the voters’ registration machines to compact disks and external hard drives.

Suarez said they only want to make sure that Negros Occidental’s database will not mix with the database that will be collected in Sulu during the general registration from July 9 to 18.

Before going to Sulu, the Comelec personnel from Negros Occidental will attend the orientation in Zamboanga City from July 5 to 6, he said.

Aside from Comelec staff in Negros Occidental, 133 elections personnel from Western Visayas and Southern Tagalog have been tapped for the general registration of voters in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) from July 9 to 18.

The Comelec will conduct the general registration of voters, not only in Sulu, but in the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi after purging the entire list of voters in the ARMM,

The Comelec Resolution 9443 said non-ARRM Comelec personnel and equipment are being brought in “to effect an honest and credible registration of voters” and “establish a clean, complete, permanent and updated list of voters in the ARMM region.”

Comelec personnel and equipment from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao will be sent to ARRM.

The Comelec personnel from Negros Occidental would bring 31 voter registration machines of the province to Sulu for voter demographics and biometrics data capturing, said Suarez.