Worrisome low new-voter registration

EDITORIAL

The Manila Times
Friday, August 21, 2009

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) admits that so far less than 850,000 new voters have registered. The deadline for registration, October 31, is fast approaching.

The consensual estimate is that thee are about five million new voters. Comelec had set a target of registering three million by October. It does not look like the target will be met.

The Comelec must heed the call of Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero to extend the registration of new voters to December. The senator said extending the registration period would give more of the youth the opportunity to vote in the May 2010 elections.

Senator Escudero aired his recommendation at a forum with students of the University of the East. Defending the youth from critics who claim that the lag in new-voter registration proves that the young Filipinos are apathetic, he said, “The youth is not apathetic as some would want to portray them, because it is they who will inherit this country.”

The opposition senator added that if some young people have indeed developed apathy towards elections and government affairs, it is because the government has failed to inspire them to register and vote.

Corruption scandals turn off citizens

Some anecdotal evidence can show that government corruption scandals and the bad reputation of Philippine elections—for being the occasion for vote-buying, fraudulent counting of ballots and tampered certificates of canvas—do turn off citizens from government affairs and elections.

But the citizens who get disgusted with government are not only young persons but also adults.

Another reason for apathy is the fear that there will be “failure of elections.” Election failure in 2010 would mean no new president and lawmakers would be elected. This would then allow the present administration and Congress to continue ruling until a new election is held.

More registration places throughout the country

Chairman of the Senate Electoral Reforms Committee, Senator Escudero also urged the Comelec to establish more registration centers in schools, barangay halls and other public facilities nationwide. A young partylist congressman, Kabataan party-list’s Rep. Raymundo Palatino made a similar call for the Comelec to open more “accessible satellite registration venues in schools and barangays throughout the country.”

Senator Escudero also wants Comelec to be more vigorous in its campaign for new voters here and abroad.

Overseas-voter registration also very low

He pointed out that the low turnout of new absentee voters overseas should drive the Comelec to “step up information campaigns and set up mobile registration units in countries where there are huge Filipino expatriate populations.”

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) data show that only about 175,000 Filipinos abroad have registered for the 2010 polls. The DFA’s target for the end of August is to register at least one million overseas Filipino voters. There are at least two million OFWs and other overseas Filipinos who can avail themselves of the absentee voting privilege.

Some analysts view the overseas Filipinos as among the most aware of the blessings of democracy because they have seen these in the United States and Western Europe (though not in the Middle East). As persons of a superior awareness of the value of suffrage, the OFWs and other overseas Filipinos could become the vanguard of a more enlightened Philippine electorate.

Their reluctance to use their voting power deprives the Philippines of a much-needed patriotic service. Are these overseas Filipinos apathetic? No. Then why aren’t they registering?

Need to amend Absentee Voting Act

The Comelec itself has an answer. Something in the Absentee Voting Act of 2001 makes the Filipinos abroad reluctant to register.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez on Friday said that the law should be amended and shorn of its provision requiring migrant Filipino workers to return to the country within three years after exercising their voting rights.

A Filipino abroad who registers and votes and later fails to comply with the requirement to come home within three years after voting would find his or her “sovereign rights”—which include the right to vote—temporarily withheld. To have these “sovereign rights” restored, he or she must pass a series of questioning.

Mr. Jimenez also mentioned that some of the OFWs are undocumented. The highest estimate is that there are a million of them in the United States. Returning to the Philippines before they get their stay status cleared up in the US would expose their illegal status to US authorities.

Mr. Jimenez also cited Filipino professionals whose contract with their employers would preclude leaving their work to fulfill the three-year requirement of the absentee-voting law.

The Comelec took this matter up with the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee in the Twelfth Congress. The poll body recommended that the provision be repealed by amendment. Mr. Jimenez said the congressional committee, which has the jurisdiction over the Absentee Voting Act of 2001, has not taken any action on the poll body’s recommendation all these past several years.

Mr. Jimenez said the Comelec is convinced that this problem provision’s removal from the law would make overseas Filipinos more eager to exercise—abroad where they are—their right of suffrage in Philippine elections.

To prove that overseas Filipinos are not apathetic and are eager to vote in 2010, Mr. Jimenez talked about a test vote that the poll body conducted through the Internet in Singapore in 2007. He said the participation rate of Filipinos in Singapore was large.