Comelec to purge absentee voters list worldwide

MANILA, Philippines – A total of 116,661 Filipinos abroad who failed to vote in the 2004 and 2007 elections will be removed from the list of voters by the Commission on Elections.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said there are 504,124 registered absentee voters worldwide.

“They did not vote twice in two regular national elections so they have to be removed from the list,” he said.

Sarmiento said the Comelec aims to register some one million absentee Filipino voters abroad.

The continuing registration of voters will start on Dec. 1 and Aug. 31 next year, he added.

The Comelec is intensifying its information campaign among embassy officials abroad to encourage overseas Filipinos to register as voters, he added.

Sarmiento said the Comelec will study if it can adopt the Internet voting system, which was pilot-tested in 2007, among overseas Filipinos in the 2010 elections.

“We are looking forward to 2010 with an automated election system and Internet voting (for absentee voters),” he said.

Meanwhile, Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said they will have to wait for another month to know which automation technology the poll body will use in the 2010 presidential elections.

“For the meantime, our preparations for the 2010 election will continue,” he said in telephone interview.

Melo said it was raised during talks between the Comelec and the Advisory Council on Poll Automation that it was not practical to use direct recording electronics (DRE) in far-flung areas where few voters are registered.

It is therefore possible to combine the DRE and optical mark reader (OMR) in the 2010 elections, he added.