10,000 Iloilo City voters face disenfranchisement

• Source: http://panaynewsphilippines.com/2015/07/11/10000-iloilo-city-voters-face-disenfranchisement/
• Saturday, July 11, 2015

By MERIANNE GRACE EREÑETA (PN)

ILOILO City – Some 10,000 registered voters here will be disenfranchised if they fail to have their biometrics taken on or before Oct. 31 this year.

They make up 4.7 percent of the 240,000 total registered voters in the city, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

These voters stand to lose their right to suffrage unless they comply with Comelec’s computerization program, according to Jonathan Sayno, assistant city election officer 2.

Since May 9 last year, said Sayno, Comelec has been reaching out to such registered voters in all the districts here through the biometrics registration and validation campaign dubbed “No Bio, No Boto.”

Comelec personnel here have been busy with the campaign — on top of registering first-time voters and processing applications for transfer of residence and correction of entries — just to ensure every registered voter gets to vote in the May 2016 election, he said.

“We are reaching out [to those] without biometrics to prevent any disenfranchisement,” Sayno said, but he also warned that voters without biometrics after the deadline will be “deactivated.”

Sayno said they plan to hold caravans in universities and more mobile registrations per district, and hope to finish all these before October.

By that time, Comelec personnel will accommodate the certificates of candidacy (COCs) of people seeking elective posts.

It is highly likely that the filing of COCs from Oct. 12 to 16 will interrupt their work in registering voters and recording and validating biometrics, Sayno admitted.