Kabataan Partylist Rep. Mong Palatino today called on the Supreme Court to immediately deliberate and compel the Commission on Elections to comply with the Voters Registration Law, mandating that continuing registration should run daily until 120 days prior to elections.

The young lawmaker filed an Urgent Petition for Certiorari and Mandamus (with Application for Preliminary Mandatory Injunction) last Friday amidst Comelec’s refusal to extend voter registration despite apparent failure to accommodate millions of new registrants until the deadline last Saturday.

“The fact that the Comelec ‘extended’ the registration until Wednesday is proof that it cannot accomodate the number of registrants given the shortened registration period and that there is really a need to move the deadline to what is mandated by the law. We urge the Supreme Court to immediately act on our petition and compel the Comelec to resume voter registration,” he said.

Based on RA 8189, Palatino said the deadline of voter registration should be should be on January 9, 2010, not on October 31, 2009 which is 70 days earlier than is prescribed by the law.

Palatino said the Comelec should not completely blame the registrants for failing to register because the office itself is responsible for ensuring that there would be an efficient registration process that can accomodate as many voters as possible, he said, reacting to Comelec’s statement that failed registrants should accept their fate.

Palatino also said the agency should have also considered several factors that prevented the youth from registering: the calamaities struck the country this year, the series of holidays declared by the President, and the swine flu outbreak.

Citing National Statistics Office data, he said that the Comelec disenfranchised roughly four (4) million first-time-voters when it stopped accepting new registrants last Saturday.

NSO data shows that there are 3.8 million first-time-voters from age group 18 to 19 alone, while half of the 8.8 million in the age group 20 to 24 may be projected as new registrants for 2010. “Based from this data, we can roughly project at least seven (7) million first-time-voters for 2010.” ###