The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (or Comelec) is extending office hours for its voter registration centers in one final push to get people signed up to vote for next year’s national election, which will rely on biometric polling. The deadline for enrolment is October 31st.
Starting October 17th, voter registration centers will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Comelec is also looking to open satellite registration offices to accommodate particularly busy venues, and to reallocate resources from particularly small and cramped offices in a bid to improve efficiency. Sites for the satellite offices could include schools, malls, auditoriums, and other such venues.
With the registration fast approaching, the campaign how now entered its “Huling Hirit”, or “Last Chance”, phase, having previously run under the slogan “Walang Forever” (roughly, “Nothing Lasts Forever”), and “No Bio, No Boto” (“No Biometrics, No Vote”) before that. Comelec has gone to great lengths to ensure that every eligible voter is registered, seeking to prevent the kinds of issues seen in the recent Kyrgyzstan election, which used biometric polling but saw complaints from some voters about not having had enough time to register their biometric data in advance. Comelec has so far been quite successful, however, with only a small percentage of eligible voters still left to get registered.
Source: Manila Bulletin
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October 7 2015 – by Alex Perala
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