Absentee voting registration extended

by Leila Salaverria (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20100308-257443/Absentee-voting-registration-extended

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has decided to extend the registration deadline for local absentee voters because of the dismal turnout.

The deadline has been moved back one week to March 15 in the hope that more voters would avail themselves of the opportunity to cast their votes early, said Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal.

Under the law, those who qualify for local absentee voting are government officials and employees, including members of the military and the police, who, on election day, may be assigned to places other than where they are registered, thus losing their chance to vote.

Those registered for absentee voting can cast their ballots between April 24 and 26.

Absentee voters, however, can only vote for president, vice president, senators and party-list representative.

Larrazabal said only 6,000 people had registered so far compared to 2007 when some 40,000 voters registered.

“Usually people apply at the last minute, so that's expected to surge,” Larrazabal told reporters on Monday.

He said it was also possible that those who qualify for absentee voting may want to try out the new automated counting machines on Election Day.

“They probably want to try voting on Election Day itself and test out the automated elections,” he said.

This would be the first automated election in the country. Where before voters had to write down the names of their candidates on the ballot, on May 10 they would only need to shade the oval next to the candidates’ names.

The ballot would then be fed into a counting machine that would record and tabulate the votes. By the end of the day, the results would be known, whereas in the old manual system the counting took weeks.