THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has removed from the list of registered voters around 200,000 inactive and deceased voters from Cebu’s 53 local government units.
According to Comelec Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano, those who didn’t vote in the last two elections or who transferred their registration to another local government unit have been taken off the list. They also took out the names of voters who are dead.
“For two or three elections, we have not deleted those who have failed to vote twice and those that were deceased because of the protection order from the Presidential Electoral Tribunal and the Senate Electoral Tribunal due to election protests. That was the reason we were not able to delete inactive voters,” he said on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019.
Based on records of the Comelec Province, a total of 1,735,119 voters trooped to polling precincts in Cebu last May 13, or 80.37 percent of the province’s 2,158,896 registered voters.
The number, though, excludes voters from highly urbanized cities of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu.
Earlier this month, the poll body’s offices in Cebu City also removed from the list of registered voters close to 100,000 voters from the city’s 80 barangays.
Records of the Cebu City Comelec north and south districts showed that 709,608 were registered to vote in the midterm elections on May 13 but only 499,679 showed up on election day to cast their votes.
“Now that the protection order has been lifted, we have deleted a lot of inactive voters. In Cebu City, more than 100,000 voters have been deleted... Our (new) registrants have not reached that number yet. There will be a significant decrease (in the number of voters),” Castillano said.
Castillano, though, said Cebu remains as the top vote-rich province in the country.
He said the Comelec may extend the conduct of voter registration under the premise that the 2020 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections would be postponed. The voter registration is set to end on Sept. 30. RTF