AFTER the voters' registration, Commission on Elections (Comelec) is in the process of cleansing the voters' list for the 2010 elections, which will be made available this December.

Comelec legal department director Ferdinand Rafanan said the complaint on the 691 "centennial" voters in Taguig City is one contribution from the public on the cleansing process that the poll body will be doing.

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Taguig Mayor Freddie Tinga earlier called on the Comelec to immediately take action on the registration and inclusion of 691 centenarians in the city's official voters' list.

He made the appeal following an expose by the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform president Etta Rosales.

It was Rosales who revealed about the "curious" record of 691 "centennial" voters or citizens who are aged more than 100 years old and allegedly registered and active in Taguig's Comelec records.

In her exposé, Rosales noted that out of the 691 centennial voters, 624 were all born in 1901; and out of the 624 born in 1901, 621 were all born on January 1, 1901.

Local Comelec officials explained that this might be due to the computer default, where registrants, who failed to write down their actual birth dates, are registered under the computer's default birth date of January 1, 1901. Others might be due to erroneous encoding.

Last Wednesday, Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said they are now validating the complaint of Mayor Tinga.

Rafanan said the best way to clear the issue is to conduct an investigation.

In a phone interview, Rafanan said the problem probably rooted when the voters failed to write down their birthdays, which caused them to be registered under the computers default birth date.

"The age is very essential for application for registration, if it was left unfilled it should have been disapproved or if the person is too old, it should have been verified," he said.

Rafanan also said that if in case the election officer failed to check the application for registration, he or she can be held liable for such error and a case can be filed for gross neglect of duty.

"We can trace those who signed at the election registration board. We will know who approved the application without even looking at the unfilled space for birthday and if the registrant is too old," he said.

Rafanan added that voters' lists in other areas should be studied if in case there are similar cases.

A person can be delisted from the voters' list of the Comelec, first, if he or she is already dead, provided with death certificate.

Second through de-activation and this is when a voter was not able to exercise his or her right to vote for two consecutive elections.

Third, if a voter is being excluded by the court because he or she is not qualified, convicted or not a resident of that municipality.

Rafanan said the Comelec can now make good use of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (Afis) in the National Capital Region (NCR) to check those voters who were doubled registered in a certain area.

"Before the 2004 election we have 97,000 double registrants in NCR. In the 2007 election there were more than 200,000 double registrants in NCR alone and we have 18,000 pending cases of double registrants in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm)." The Afis is already used in Armm. (Glaiza Jarloc/Sunnex)