‘Let NCR-based ARMM voters register there’

A legislator in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has made a last-ditch request for the Commission on Election (Comelec) to set up registration centers in Metro Manila to accommodate voters who work or go to school in the National Capital Region.

“This is a call to enfranchise those ARMM residents who may not be able to go home to register,” Samira Gutoc, women sectoral representative in the ARMM’s Regional Legislative Assembly, told reporters in Cotabato City recently.

Gutoc explained that having a registration center in Metro Manila for ARMM residents would mean reduced traveling expenses and less hassle.

She estimated that there were at least 100,000 of these voters who are now based in Metro Manila.

Gutoc, however, said that once these voters’ application are approved in Metro Manila, their registration records in the ARMM should be cancelled to prevent the process from being used by unscrupulous individuals.

“They can present their valid voter’s ID before the election registration board,” she said.

The Comelec will preside, starting today, over a scheduled 10-day general registration in the five-province ARMM in compliance with a joint

resolution of Congress which voted to annul the region’s Book of Voters to cleanse it of ghost entries.

The ARMM has around 1.7 million voters.

As a result, the Comelec also declared that voters applications which were filed between March 5 and 31 and from April 2 to June 4 this year are considered null and void. Ryan D. Rosauro, Inquirer Mindanao with Jerome Aning