THE Commission on Elections was asked Monday to expand satellite voters’ registration and “buy more biometric fingerprint scanners” to speed up voter’s registration ahead of the 2022 national and local elections.
In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon reminded Comelec that Congress allocated sufficient funds to the poll body under the 2020 and 2021 national budgets, prodding officials to “use it to buy more biometric gadgets, hire more consultants or job order employees and even rent out a bigger space or venue of voter registration.”
Drilon added: “Let’s not scrimp on the budget. If there’s a need to bring voters’ registration to every barangay, the Comelec must do it.” The opposition senator stressed that “installing satellite voter registration sites is a solution within the law that Comelec should maximize and use efficiently” to increase voters for the 2022 national and local elections.
This, even as the Minority Leader acknowledged it was obvious that due to Covid-19 health protocols, Comelec offices throughout the country have to limit the number of registrants they could accommodate in a day.
Citing Comelec data, Drilon added there are still 3 million new voters to be registered and 7 million who need to renew their registration because they have not voted in the last two elections.
The senator said, “there is no way the Comelec can reach its target number of voters for next year’s election at that rate of 50 to 70 registrants per day, airing concerns that “we are running out of time. Comelec should intensify its efforts to install more registration sites.”
Moreover, the lawmaker lamented that the lack of sufficient biometric scanners further slows down the process, noting there is only one biometric scanner per Comelec office.
He added that “even if people go to the Comelec office to register, the Comelec has no capacity to accommodate a large number of applicants per day for a number of reasons,” which include insufficient manpower and few units of biometric scanners.
Drilon said the lack of bigger Comelec offices in all districts to accommodate a large number of applicants adds to the problem, suggesting that “the Comelec can organize satellite registration in open courts, churches, schools with safety protocols followed to cover more applicants.”
At the same time, the senator suggested that Comelec consider putting more than one satellite registration sites for cities with voting big populations. “They can coordinate with the homeowner’s associations to open their clubhouse or basketball courts for the registration. They can coordinate with the churches to open their doors. The National Secretariat of Social Action had offered to facilitate opening up of the churches,” Drilon said.
Drilon further suggested that the poll body “hire more people” to manage the satellite registration all over the country, saying: “Let us hire those IT people who lost their jobs. They know how to operate biometric machines. It can generate income for them for at least three to four months. They can be accompanied by a Comelec civil servant who can supervise the operation.”