Baguio City (CNN Philippines) — The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) here reminded the public anew to visit the nearest election office and offsite registration sites or risk losing their right of suffrage in the upcoming 2016 elections.
Atty. Elenita Tabangin-Capuyan, Benguet provincial election supervisor, said around 34,000 of 294,927 registered voters in Benguet and Baguio City have not had their biometrics information taken.
Capuyan, however, says this is already a big reduction as the province had already lessended the number of those who have not had their biometric information taken to only 10 percent as of July.
She expects further reduction of the number of voters without biometric data as the COMELEC provincial office has been conducting offsite registration in malls, schools and the barangays every Sunday for revalidation and new registrations.
She says they will only conduct offsite registrations until September as biometrics capturing will return at the local election offices by October.
In Baguio city, she says, those that have not gone to have their biometric information taken will be further reduced by 11,000 voters by the end of August.
The provincial election officer says they have been intensifying their calls for local voters to have their biometric information taken. But Capuyansays given the situation in Baguio where migration of the population is fast, there is a high possibility that the high number of voters who have gone through biometric data capturing is because they have already moved residences or have gone overseas.
She says local election officers in Benguet and Baguio City have already sent letters to these voters through registered mail informing them of their possible removal from the official voters list.
Baguio City remains to be one with the highest number of voters with around 123,000 voters – 13,000 of which who have not had their biometric data captured.
Of all the towns in Benguet, the town of Kapangan has the most number of voters who have not had their biometric information taken with 2,725 voters, while the town with the least number of voters without biometrics is the town of Atok with 389.
The provincial election supervisor also reported that some 251 voters have incomplete biometric information which means they either have incomplete fingerprint data or photo taken during their registration.
According to the COMELEC, with the signing of Republic Act No. 10367 into law last February 15, 2013 by President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, the absence of biometrics in a voter’s registration record has become an additional ground for deactivation.
Voters who would fail to submit themselves for validation between May 6 of last year to October 31 of this year would cause COMELEC to deactivate their registration record. This would mean that these deactivated voters not be allowed to vote for the May 2016 elections.
