Many fail to register in Albay, Laguna

LEGAZPI CITY—Although thousands rushed to register and have their biometics taken in various Commission on Elections offices in Albay and Laguna on the last day of voter registration on Saturday, the number was only a fraction of the voters in the two provinces who failed to register.

The Comelec in Albay said only about 6,000 had their biometics taken on Saturday out of about 47,000 who did not update their registration.

Albay has 697,489 registered voters but as of Saturday morning, 47,532 still needed to have their biometrics taken, said provincial election supervisor Romeo Serrano.

Waited for hours

In Ligao City, hundreds of voters swarmed the Comelec office but it was able to accommodate only about 300 by the end of the day.

City election supervisor Phenny Batalla said the biometrics of some 4,700 of Ligao’s total registered voters of 56,977 had not been taken.

Many, like Dennis Olarte, waited for over four hours to register.

Hanging PCs

Erwin Macasinag, an employee of Comelec-Ligao, said there was a delay in capturing the biometrics of voters as the computers would hang due to the large volume of registrants.

A similar situation was observed in Laguna. Voters went to Comelec offices in droves.

As of Oct. 28, there were around 1.6 million voters in the province, but around 35,000 still did not have their biometrics and some 20,000 still had incomplete biometrics, Comelec-Laguna records showed.

Since 2013

Laguna election supervisor Dioscoro Pajutan said this was the result of people waiting until the last minute to register even if the registration had been going on since 2013.

The Comelec rolled out a “No Bio, No Boto” campaign pursuant to Republic Act No. 10367.

The law, implemented in 2013, states that voters without biometrics by Oct. 31, 2015, will not be able to vote in the May 9 elections next year. Michael B. Jaucian and Kimberly Baraoidan, Inquirer Southern Luzon