Comelec won’t use AFIS in barangay polls

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will not use the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to weed out flying voters in  the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan polls amid the deluge of applicants for voter’s registration.

Comelec Commissioner Grace Padaca admitted it is no longer possible to screen voters with more than one registration using AFIS because of time constraints.

“We have discussed it in the en banc that it will be difficult to do the AFIS checking now. We cannot do it at this phase of the elections,” Padaca said.

To identify voters with double or multiple registration, Padaca explained they have to cross-match their digital fingerprints with more than 52 million registered voters.

“We’re talking here of 1.8 million new registrants and 519,000 transferees. That alone is 2.3 million, so it takes a lot of time... How could you expect this kind of influx, then compare them to the data base all over the country,” she added.

The Comelec was caught by surprise by the “sheer volume” of registrants during the voter’s registration from July 22 to 31, considering that the midterm elections were held only three months ago.

Based on a report of the Comelec’s Election and Barangay Affairs Department, there were 1.8 million applicants for new registration and this is higher than the 700,000 target.

Calabarzon accounted for 243,589 of the new registrants, followed by Central Luzon with 193,232 and Metro Manila with 143,301.

The report showed that Calabarzon also had the highest number of transferees with 66,573, followed by Central Luzon with 51,371 and Central Visayas with 47,887.

There were 519,086 applicants for transfer of registration records and 121,3677 applicants for reactivation of registration.

Western Visayas, on the other hand, had the most applicants for reactivation of voter registration at 16,178, followed by Calabarzon with 13,217 and Central Luzon with 12,957.