Comelec starts printing of 34 million voters' ID cards

MANILA, Philippines - After a long delay, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has finally given the go-signal for the printing of voters’ identification (ID) cards for over 34 million voters nationwide.

In a resolution, the Comelec approved the request for the printing of voters’ ID cards after ensuring that the voters’ list has been cleansed of multiple registrants.

“Considering that the ID forms and printers are already available, the commission resolves to approve the foregoing request for authority to commence the printing of the voter’s ID card of the cleansed records,” the commission said in a one-page resolution.

Comelec directors Teopisto Elnas (operations) and Ester Villaflor-Roxas (technical matters) have reported that more than 35 million voters have already undergone processing through the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS).

The procedure, according to Elnas and Villaflor-Roxas, enabled the poll body to identify and remove from the list hundreds of thousands of multiple registrants.

“Out of the 35 million records processed, 738,640 records were found to be true hits and these records were already forwarded to the field offices for deletion,” they said.

The poll body earlier announced plans to start the printing of at least 25 million voters’ ID cards by the end of the year as part of the P1.5-billion AFIS project.

Under the AFIS, the Comelec can now get the voters’ photographs and the digital images of their signatures and fingerprints.

The use of cross-matching machines would then compare the data, identifying those with double and multiple registrations.

Last year, the Comelec awarded the AFIS contract to the joint venture of Unison Computer System Inc., Lamco Paper Products Co. Inc. and NEC Philippines Inc.