City election office logs 12k registrants in extended period

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Iloilo City office enlisted 12,184 voters during the extended voters’ registration on Oct 11 to 30, 2021.

The greatest number of registrations came in the penultimate week (Oct 25 to 30), where city COMELEC data indicated a total 6,424 registrants in that period alone.

This was a drastic escalation from the registrations logged on Oct. 11 to 15 (2,900), and on Oct. 18 to 22 (2,860).

Half of the voter registrations logged in this extension period were new registrations at 6,190 or 50.8 percent.

Those who transferred from other cities or municipalities numbered 3,005 or 24.6 percent.

The rest are composed of other types of registration, such as:

• Transfer from within Iloilo City (1,104);
• Transfer with reactivation (314);
• Transfer with reactivation and correction (136);
• Transfer with correction (162);
• Reactivation (735);
• Reactivation with correction (159);
• Correction of entries (239); and
• Transfer from Overseas Absentee Voting (140).

There were two other categories of voter registration which did not log any new records at the city election office (inclusion and reinstatement).

As to reactivation, most of these were on-site, as there were only 4 individuals who availed of the online reactivation mode via email.

There were slightly more registrations of female voters (6,128) compared to male registrations (6,056).

The local COMELEC also logged 664 vulnerable persons to have registered, composed of 202 persons with disability, 1 illiterate person, and 461 senior citizens. No indigenous persons or internally displaced persons registered.

Jonathan Sayno of the COMELEC Iloilo City told Daily Guardian that they do not have a final tally of voters yet as they are waiting for death certificates from the Local Civil Registrar, and updates from the those who have transferred to other areas.

As of the July 21 hearing of the Election Registration Board, there are a total of 304,450 confirmed voters in Iloilo City.

Adding the 12,184 registrations from Oct. 11 to 30 and the 19,638 on Sept. 6 to 30, they estimate that the city will have a total of 336,272 registered voters in the 2022 national and local elections.

Voter registrations nationwide were supposed to end on September 30, but public clamor, including the swift passage of extension bills in Congress pushed the COMELEC En Banc to implement an extended voter registration period.