Comelec chief sees up to 1M names out of ARMM voting list

SOLDIERS and military vehicles like this are highly visible in Lanao del Sur, one of five provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao where a registration of voters is being conducted in an effort to start holding elections in the region next year on a clean slate. RICHEL V. UMEL/INQUIRER MINDANAO

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Up to a million names could disappear from the voters’ list of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) at the end of a registration period designed to cleanse the list that has been used as a tool for election fraud in the region, according to the country’s highest-ranking election official.

Sixto Brillantes, a former election lawyer and now chair of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), said he saw a trend in the registration of voters that could reflect the real number of voters in the region that became notorious for many of the country’s dirtiest elections.

“If this trend continues, there would be about 750,000 (voters) registered at the end of the 10-day process,” said Brillantes on Tuesday after his visit to Tawi-Tawi, one of the ARMM provinces where the registration of voters is being conducted.

“This is very low compared to the old voters’ list, which showed the ARMM with 1.7 million voters,” he added.

Brillantes said judging by the trend, the figure of 1.7 million voters on the canceled list was “really bloated.”

The Comelec objective, he said, is to come out with the “real turnout, not similar to the bloated list which we have annulled.”

Brillantes said he personally witnessed fraud being committed during the registration.

He said he saw minors filling out registration forms in some precincts in Tawi-Tawi.

The election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting earlier reported minors being made to register as voters in Maguindanao and other ARMM areas.

Brillantes said during his visit to two precincts in Simunul, a town in Tawi-Tawi, he saw “registrants who did not even look like they were 18 years old already (the voting age).”

“They told me they were 22,” said Brillantes, recalling his conversation with the registrants. “I joked that the people of Simunul look way younger than their actual ages because they look 14 years old to me,” said the Comelec chair.

The case, he said, was not isolated and appeared to be common in many precincts. In one precinct that he did not identify, he said he saw five minors turn up to register.

Comelec employees manning the precincts were told to just allow the minors to register to avoid getting into trouble with people who are behind the fraudulent practice, said Brillantes.

Brillantes said this would also save time otherwise spent on arguing with the illegal registrants.

“They should accept the forms and issue a receipt,” Brillantes said, recalling his instruction to Comelec employees assigned to registration precincts.

“We have a scheme to disqualify them later,” he said.

Brillantes said one of the mechanisms which Comelec is using to weed out illegal registrants from the list is biometrics, which identifies a person through his or her fingerprints or DNA, among others.

“We have to follow legal procedures to eliminate minor registrants,” said Brillantes.

Village officials, he said, are in connivance with politicians or syndicates behind the fraudulent practice of forcing minors to register and they have been warned.

“This appears to be a culture here in the ARMM. The barangay officials feel they were obligated to bring voters to the registration centers,” he said.

Brillantes said there is no law prohibiting village officials from accompanying voters during the registration process but it was unlawful for them to fill out forms on behalf of the actual registrants.

He said Comelec would hold an en banc session to bar flying voters from taking part in elections for the rest of their lives. Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao