The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has approved the extension of voter registration hours, but rejected calls from senators to add another month to the registration period.
Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez announced on Wednesday that the Comelec en banc decided by majority vote not to extend the voter registration period beyond September 30 because of operational concerns.
Jimenez said the decision was reached after the Comelec en banc discussed the Senate resolution calling for a one-month extension to the voter registration period given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The Commission is concerned that if we delay the end of voter registration it will also cause corresponding delays in all other preparatory activities, especially those which depend on the finalization of the list of voters. And that will…potentially adverse the timelines in the preparations for the presidential elections,” Jimenez said.
Although Comelec rejected the proposal to move the last day of voter registration to October 31, the poll body allowed longer hours to register, including on Saturdays and during holidays.
According to Jimenez, the exact details on the extension of voting registration hours will be announced once the actual resolution is promulgated.
With longer hours now for voter registration, Jimenez said, they are expecting less than a million voters to register.
“I think it is probably going to be under a million, conservatively because of again as you pointed out, there are several lockdowns in effect right now,” he said.
To date, Jimenez said, there are already over 60 million registered voters, beating their 59 million projection.
Of this total, he said 4.3 million are newly registered.
“We will continue working until the end of this registration period to accommodate whoever might still be trying to get registered for the 2022 elections,” he said.