DAGUPAN CITY, July 16 (PNA)–The Commission on Elections provincial office signed separate memorandum of agreements with big shopping malls in Pangasinan to become additional venues for voters registration.
Provincial Elections Supervisor Marino Salas said the move was due to the big volume of voters who have not submitted biometric data. The province has about 1.65 million registered voters as April this year.
Speaking Thursday (July 16) during the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters sa Pilipinas (KBP) forum, Salas however said that of the 1.65 million registered voters, some 120,000 still need to submit their biometric data to the poll body,
Those needing biometrics were those who registered before the Comelec in 2004 or before when biometric registration was not yet in effect.
There were some 320,000 voters in Pangasinan who were found to be still needing biometrics since the Comelec started the validation of registration in 2014, said Salas
But these were already reduced to some 120,000, he added.
“We are now looking for these 120,000, that is why we will soon have registrations where malls are located, said Salas.
These voters may either have transferred their voting places, have not voted twice in successive elections or have already died, he added.
He reiterated that in this election, those who failed to validate their biometric data will not be allowed to vote in the coming polls.
Salas said the Dagupan City election office was the first to conduct mall registration but this will be repeated and duplicated in other places where there are existing malls.
Salas said the registration of new voters just turning 18 years old before the May 2016 election could put the number of voters in Pangasinan to some 1.7 million, said Salas.
Registration of new voters and biometric validation of the old ones in the master list will end sometime in October, the same month when all candidates for the 2016 polls are required to file their respective certificates of candidacy in preparation for another automated election. (PNA)