Thursday, February 01, 2007 City poll officials beat deadline in cleansing voters’ records
CEBU City’s poll offices beat the deadline for the cleansing of voters’ records, but have yet to come up with the final list and the total number of registered voters in the city.
They have until Feb. 7 to set the number of precincts, which will include the total number of voters and their precinct assignments, said the election officer for the south district, Lionel Marco Castillano.
Although they already completed purging the list of voters of double registrants, deceased voters and flying voters, they have yet to match their records in the computer with those in the book of voters.
Once the number of required precincts is identified, Election Officer for the North District Marchel Sarno said they can determine how many ballots and election paraphernalia are needed.
The Commission on Election (Comelec) central office has identified the city’s poll offices as two of the 12 problematic areas in the country in terms of the voters’ records that still have to be cleansed.
As of Jan. 3, the south district office still had 118,671 records that had to be checked, while the north district office had 63,500 records.
“We were able to beat the deadline already. Everything has been checked. But just to make sure, we will re-check the voters’ records and compare those that were stored in the computer with the records in the book of voters,” Castillano told Sun.Star Cebu.
A report on the re-check will be submitted to Comelec Manila on Feb. 8. Sarno said that with the results, they can already come up with the number of precincts.
“Then we’ll know the number of ballots needed, the number of precincts and who will be in that precinct because we will already be able to segregate the voters and determine how many will be assigned to a precinct,” he said.
Meanwhile, the north district office will submit to Manila the certificate of candidacy of Wendell Hanopol Lope, who plans to run against Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
Lope, 31, filed his candidacy papers last Tuesday but when Comelec officials checked with the voters’ records, they found out that he is not a registered voter of the city.
“He’s not a registered voter so he’s considered disqualified, but we will not consider him a nuisance candidate. We’ll just note down that he’s not registered when we forward the papers to Manila,” Sarno said. (LCR)
