SOME voters of a barangay in Bogo City complained their names can no longer be found in the voters list or these have been transferred to other barangays even if they did not ask for it.
Bogo Election Assistant Jose Barriga said that the voters who complained were from Barangay Sto. Rosario and voted in the May 14 elections.
Barriga admitted he and his staff were also surprised by the development because no one among them altered the list of voters.
Barriga said they are all willing to undergo an investigation.
Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano, in a memorandum, allowed Barriga and the Board of Election Tellers (BET) to use other available lists, like the voting records in the May 14 local and national elections or the records of the plebiscite last June when Bogo became a city.
In cases like this, Comelec Resolution 8300 provides that one of the references that may be used is the Book of Voters.
However, the Book of Voters is not available because it is still with the Supreme Court, in relation to the case that defeated vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda, now a senator, filed against Vice President Noli de Castro after the 2004 elections.
Original precinct
“The policy of our election laws is to uphold one’s right to suffrage,” Castillano said in allowing Barriga and the BET to use other available records.
One’s name is deleted from the voters list only if one failed to vote in two successive regular elections.
“Wherefore, when the voter appears on the record that he/she voted in the May 14, 2007 elections and in the absence of proof that he/she performed an act that would cause the cancellation of his/her name in the list of voters, then he/she should be allowed to vote in his original precinct,” Castillano’s memorandum read. (MBG)
