BONTOC, Mountain Province – Double registration among voters wanting to transfer their voting centers might proliferate once there will be an extension of the ongoing registration of voters beyond the September 30, 2021 prescribed deadline, an election official said here recently.
Provincial Election Supervisor lawyer Ricardo Lampac pointed out that such is the case because the prescribed process to transfer the registration of a voter from his or her current voting center to a place outside the jurisdiction of the municipal, city or provincial election office will take a longer period of time or approximately 2 to 3 months upon filing of the request to transfer the venue of where the voter intends to cast his or her vote on the May 9, 2022 synchronized national and local elections.
However, he explained that the problem of double registration for voters simply wanting to transfer their voting centers from their original precincts to other areas within the jurisdiction of the municipal, city or provincial election office will not exist because the prescribed process is much easier.
Lampac stipulated that once that there will be requests for transfer of voting centers, the biometrics of the voters will already be taken in the place that they intend to vote even if their biometrics are still existing in the place where the voters are actually registered.
Further, the election officer concerned will then request the confirmation of the registration and the biometrics of the voters wanting to transfer their registration to his or her area of jurisdiction while the same will still be processed by the election officer of the place where the voters have been earlier registered, thus, in the said case, there is already double registration that is evident because their names are already present in 2 different voting centers and places.
According to him, to avoid this kind of scenario, Filipino citizens who are qualified to vote by May 9, 2022 should immediately register in their desired places where they want to cast their votes in the remaining one and half month allotted for the registration of voters to avoid being dis-enfranchised and for them to exercise their constitutional right to suffrage.
Lampac added there is also a deadline in the cleansing of the voters list which falls in January that is why if there had been transfer of registration of voters to other polling precincts outside the place where they were originally registered, it is likely possible that there will be double registration, thus, the scheduled September 30 2021 deadline for the registration of voters should not be extended to avoid the possibility double registration to the prejudice the concerned voters.
He urged voters to avail of the ongoing registration period to already decide where to vote so that they could already process the transfer of their polling precincts as early as possible to prevent them from encountering problems in terms of having been double registered in the future which will be a waste of time, money, effort and resources on their part because they might be exposed to possible legal suits.
Lampac asserted that the COMELEC provincial and municipal offices in the province are ready to attend to the concerns being brought to their attention by the voters who want to be guided accordingly. By Dexter A. See