MANILA -- A Commission on Elections (Comelec) official said Wednesday that an investigation is now being conducted on the 691 centenarians found in the 2007 voters' list in Taguig.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said the poll body is now validating the complaint of Taguig Mayor Freddie Tinga, who earlier called the commission to immediately take action on the registration and inclusion of the 691 "centennial" voters or citizens aged more than 100 years old in Taguig’s voters’ list.

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"We are currently validating the complaint, and if we found it to be true, we will immediately file a formal request with the poll body to invalidate those registrations and strike out the names from the voters' list for the 2010 elections," he said.

The City Government verified Tuesday the existence of some centenarians in the list of Institute for Political and Electoral Reform president Etta Rosales, who earlier made the expose.

The team looked into a certain Rosalyn Ricafort Galvez, an alleged 127- year-old voter from Blk 32, Lot 47 in Sunflower Street, Western Bicutan but failed to find her under the registered address.

The team also verified and learned that a certain Belinda Sala of 21-D Ambal Street in Western Bicutan, who was allegedly born on January 1, 1901, had already transferred to Pasig City only in her late 40s.

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 said the issue 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.

But Tinga argued that applications for registration with incomplete basic information, such as birth date and year of birth, should not have been validated and registered, in the first place.

"Should the irregularity prove to be a technical or computer error, it would only show how haphazard the registration and voter listing processes have been. We have questioned time and again the registration process here in Taguig, where illegal registrants have been allowed into the voters' lists," Tinga added.

Rosales's complaint was just the latest incident to mar the city's registration.

Taguig Vice Mayor George Elias wrote a letter to Comelec chairman Jose Melo, asking to investigate and take action on the registration irregularities in the local poll office.

Elias cited the registration of more than 200 enlisted personnel based in Fort Bonifacio, who are non-Taguig residents.

He said the soldiers stipulated the Navy Station, the Marine Barracks and Army Barracks in Fort Bonifacio as their addresses in their registration forms.

"This indicates that they are there because of their military occupation and tour of duty, and that they do not have valid residences in Taguig," Elias said in his letter to the Comelec.

Election rules state that soldiers are domestic absentee voters who can vote only for candidates vying for positions in the national election and not for the local elections.

Reports said several civilians from Cavite, Batangas, Bulacan, and Muntinlupa have come to register in Taguig for a fee of P1,000 each allegedly through the manipulation of a mayoralty aspirant, Elias said.

"We respectfully request the commission to take appropriate action on the matter to put a stop to the unlawful registration, including the relief of Comelec personnel who are involved in this illegal operation, with dispatch," Elias added in his letter.

Meanwhile, Jimenez said the Taguig incident is only an isolated case, noting that computer or encoding error might cause it and doesn't look malicious.

Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, for his part, called on the people who may have similar complaints to bring it to the attention of the election registration board (ERB).

"There's a hearing of the ERB on November 16... You can complain before the ERB and you can question there the application or registration," he said. (AH/With FP/Sunnex)