CEBU CITY, April 8 (PNA) — An official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Cebu City has urged the over 33,000 voters in the city to have their biometrics validated on or before October 31 to avoid being disenfranchised in the 2016 elections.
Lawyer Marchel Sarno, Cebu City north district election officer, said that out of the 565,150 registered voters in the city about 33,000 of them failed to validate their biometrics.
As of January 19 this year, north district has 18,066 voters with no biometrics while 14,078 voters have incomplete biometrics in the south district.
The poll body said that voters with no biometrics will not be allowed to vote in the 2016 elections.
The Comelec has posted a schedule in its office to serve notice to all the 80 barangays in Cebu City of the satellite registration sites where voters can have their biometrics validated.
For south district it will be held in Poblacion, Pardo on April 12, 2015.
The Comelec, however, has yet to finalize the satellite registration site for the north district.
“We go to barangays, we conduct satellite registration on mountainous area because some of them can’t come here at the office which is too far from their place,” Sarno said.
Bernard George de los Reyes, south district election assistant, said voters who failed to validate until October 31 will be excluded from the list of voters.
“Automatically, we deactivate voters who can’t validate until October 31 this year which means they are not allowed to vote,” he said.
Republic Act No. 10367 requires all voters to submit themselves for validation in order to have a validated data. (PNA)