THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has delisted more than 7,000 names from its voters' list in Davao City, after it has cleansed its database in preparation for the upcoming barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections in May.
Comelec-Davao election assistant Maysah Casar told SunStar Davao that a total of 7,735 voters have been removed from the list, of which 5,037 voters’ are from the first district; 1,552 from the second district, and 1,146 from the third district.
She said voters that have been deactivated and deleted are part of the campaign to cleanse the list. She added that cleansing their database is a process of deleting those double registrants and sorting out those who are already dead.
In Section 29 of the Voter's Registration Act, it states that names of voters who have died "as certified by the local civil registrar" will also have to be deleted from the voters' list.
Through automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS), double registrants will be detected, Casar said. She also said that the system will recognize double records with the help of their AFIS and delete the voter’s original record.
"Double registration happened when a voter transferred to another city/municipality then registered at the Comelec in that place as a new voter. The cleansing also includes those who failed to vote in the past two elections," Casar said.
Under the Section 27 of the Republic Act 8189 or The Voter's Registration Act, any person who did not vote in the two successive preceding regular elections as shown by their voting records will be delisted or removed.
According to the final report of the Comelec-Davao, there are 923,540 registered voters in the city for the 2018 polls.
Of the total number, there are 369,962 voters in first district, 287,782 in second district, and 265,796 in third district.
Comelec-Davao also noted 300,037 registered SK voters, of which 115,919 are from first district, 95,797 are from second district, and 88,321 are from third district. The Comelec strictly discouraged flying voters during the elections.