Davao sets up mobile centers to register 180,000 voters

DAVAO CITY—The city’s Liga ng mga Barangay (village) will set up mobile registration centers at the city council and various districts to make as many voters eligible to vote in the 2016 presidential elections.

Councilor January Duterte, Liga president, said her office was now coordinating with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the conduct of mobile registration so that the estimated 180,000 voters at risk of being disenfranchised for lack of biometrics data could vote next year.

“Hopefully we can resolve the issue before October, which is the deadline for the biometrics recording,” Duterte said.

In Catalunan Grande alone, where Duterte is village chair, some 3,000 voters still have to undergo biometrics data capturing.

Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte was also helping send villagers to the Comelec, she said.

“We will announce the schedule for mobile registration at the council and the district offices as soon as the schedules are fixed,” she added.

Vice Mayor Duterte said the mobile registration was the collective effort of the city council and the Liga, and would serve those who had yet to update their Comelec data and those working nearby.

“We need to resolve the Comelec problem or else many of our voters would not be able to vote next year. While we still have time, we need to do our share,” he said.

Last week, the Comelec said some 180,000 registered voters in this city out of the total 888,442 would not be able to cast their votes during the 2016 presidential elections, unless they completed the biometrics requirement by Oct. 31.

“We still have about five months left to capture the biometrics data of the remaining voters who did not undergo the process,” said Marlon Casquejo, assistant Comelec director for Southern Mindanao.

He admitted that the situation was alarming because without biometrics, “they cannot vote.”

The Mandatory Biometrics Registration Act of 2013 prescribed that voters who lack biometrics records would not be allowed to vote in the 2016 polls. Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao