Monday, April 16, 2007 Registered voters losing ‘appetite’ for elections By Lizanilla J. Amarga
IT LOOKS like a huge part of registered voters in the city and the province of Misamis Oriental are no longer interested to partake in the May 14 elections.
The regional office of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) records show that out of the 46,080 registered voters dropped from the voters' list, 37,010 of them are those who failed to vote twice in the two successive elections -- May 2001 Elections and May 2004 Elections.
Comelec assistant regional director Carlito Ravelo said these 37,010 inactive voters include those who deliberately refrained from exercising their rights to vote and intentionally boycotted the last two poll races.
Also, those who have already migrated out of the country or to some other places.
"Ug siguro mga flying voters kini sila kay ngano di naman sila gabotar? Wala na siguro ni sila mapulihan (And perhaps some of them are flying voters as why is it that no one is voting under their names? Maybe no one have replaced them)," he told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro Sunday.
Ravelo said out of the 46,080 registered voters there were 5,142 who were already recorded as having passed away while 3,080 registered voters have been recorded as having transferred to other provinces.
"We also found 158 double registrants in our lists and they were scattered all over the different towns in the province and city," he said.
Comelec records shows that Province of Misamis Oriental has only a total of 452,759 registered voters while Cagayan de Oro has 220,790 registered voters or a total of 673,549 voters.
But despite this decrease in the number of registered voters in the Province of Misamis Oriental and City of Cagayan de Oro, the entire Northern Mindanao still the Comelec-10 recorded an increase by four percent or 82,011 voters more for this May 2007 Elections.
This as records show that last May 10, 2004 there were 2,046,557 registered voters in the entire Northern Mindanao as compared to this years' election, which went up to a total of 2,128,568 voters.
Comparing the figures to that of the 2004 elections, data at the Comelec show that Bukidnon has the highest increase of 41,568 voters, from 558,286 to 600,854.
This is followed by Lanao del Norte with 21,241 voters, from 463,603 to 484,844, Misamis Occidental with 12,810 voters, from 302,339 to 315,149, Misamis Oriental with 4,606 voters, from 668,986 to 673,592 and Camiguin with 786 voters, from 53,343 to 54,129 voters.
There is also a total of 11,908 clustered precincts in the 2,020 barangays of the region, the highest number of which is in Misamis Oriental with 3,456, followed by Lanao del Norte with 3,185, Bukidnon with 2,907, Misamis Occidental with 2,057, and lowest in Camiguin with 303.
