Casiño to Comelec: Give PWDs more time to list up for 2013 polls

Bayan Muna Party-list Representative Teddy Casiño. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

A lawmaker on Tuesday appealed to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to extend the one-day special voter registration for persons with disabilities to at least a  week to ensure that more PWDs would be able to participate in the 2013 elections.

“We appeal to the Comelec to give more than one day for PWDs to register, taking into consideration their physical limitations,” said Bayan Muna party-list Representative Teodoro Casiño Tuesday. “It would be better if the special registration for PWDs would be held for one week,” he added.

The Comelec on Monday announced that all its local offices across the country, except in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, will hold a special registration for PWDs on August 11.

Casiño lauded the Comelec for creating special polling precincts for PWDs.  “It is good that it did not have to wait for a proposed law on this and took the initiative to create such special polling precincts for PWDs,” said the lawmaker.

He pointed out that during the 2010 elections, senior citizens left polling centers instead of climbing up two flights of stairs to reach their voting precincts. “We do not want this to happen again both for our senior citizens and PWDs,” said Casiño.

Casiño is the primary author of House Bill No. 4048 or the Polling Center Accessibility Act of 2011 which has been approved on third reading by the House of Representatives as HB 5509.

“We are also appealing to the Senate to pass a counterpart bill so that PWDs, senior citizens and expectant mothers will be assigned special voting rooms on election day.

Their ballots will be collected and forwarded to the corresponding precincts,” he said.