Says Comelec ‘way off target’, renews calls for extension of deadline

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino today urged the Commission on Elections to step up its efforts in encouraging more youth and first-time voters to register for the 2010 elections by conducting “more available and accessible satellite registrations” in schools, barangays and communities.

Palatino said that the Comelec is disturbingly ‘way off target’, citing the agency’s data that as of latest, only 841,200 new voters have registered. “This is a far cry from Comelec’s 3 million target come deadline, and even still an epic backlog from the estimated 5 million first-time voters in the country,” Palatino said.

He said that the figure presented by Comelec indeed showed a ‘stable increase in new registrants but is moving at a very slow snail-pace.’

Palatino blamed this on the shortage of satellite registration sites situated in schools and youth-populated communities and barangays. “We believe that the easiest and most encouraging way for the youth to register is to bring registration closer to them.”

He, however, also added that his office has been receiving a steady stream of reports and complaints from Sangguniang Kabataan officials, student councils and community-based youth organizations that satellite registrations being held in their areas are “too limiting.”

“The problem is the Comelec is imposing a per day quota for every satellite registration. We have had complaints, for instance, that an SK managed to gather as many as a thousand (first-time voters), only to have the Comelec shut down its machines and pack up after 200 new registrants. Their reason is that the machines cannot handle the numbers. Add this factor to the also limited number of machines and the time-consuming process of applying for satellite registration, babagal talaga,” Palatino said.

He said that the Comelec should have first considered these factors before shortening the deadline for voters’ registration.

“At the rate things are going and with only barely three months to go, how many new registrants is the Comelec really expecting? We reiterate our call to extend the deadline to the original date of December 15 as a concrete and feasible resolution to this problem,” Palatino said.

Palatino earlier filed House Resolution 1162, urging the Comelec to return the deadline of voters’ registration from October 30 to December 15. ###