The Supreme Court has been asked to compel the Commission on Elections to extend the Oct. 31 deadline for registration of voters for next year’s general elections.
In a 24-page urgent petition, Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon and his group appealed to the SC to issue a mandatory injunction ordering the Comelec to extend the period of registration up to Jan. 8 next year or more than two months.
Ridon, along with Anakbayan Vencer Crisostomo and National Union of Students of the Philippines president Sarah Jane Elago, national president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines, also asked for the nullification of the resolutions of the Comelec setting the deadline.
The petitioners cited aggravating circumstances to justify the extension of the registration period, which already lasted for a year and a half.
They cited, for instance, the latest admission of the poll body that some three million voters stand to be delisted as they still have no biometrics data a few days before the deadline.
“An aggravating factor in this issue is the respondent’s implementation of the ‘No Bio, No Boto’ policy, which automatically delists registered voters who fail to have their biometrics data captured, pursuant to Republic Act No. 10367 or the Mandatory Biometrics Voter Registration Act,” the petitioners stressed.
“With the very high volume of first-time registrants and voters in the May 9, 2016 elections, the Oct. 31, 2015 deadline set by respondent for the filing of application of registration of voters provides is utterly insufficient to accommodate first-time youth registrants, voters without biometrics, and voters highly eager to participate in the May 9, 2016 elections,” they said.
Another reason cited by petitioners was the suspension of the registration for voters last Oct. 12 to 16 to give way to the scheduled filing of Certificates of Candidacy of national and local candidates.
“This fact in itself is a violation of R.A. 8189 [automated election law[, which provides for a system of continuing registration of voters that shall be conducted daily, except for the period starting one hundred twenty [120] days before a regular election,” they said.
Petitioners also cited Comelec’s admitted problems during the registration period, including “long queues and waiting, with some registration centers receiving up to 1,000 registrants per day; insufficient registration documents; malfunctioning or insufficient
number of data capturing machines; and that DCM, which records the voters’ fingerprints, photographs and pertinent information, can only process around 250 applications a day.”
Lastly, the group argued that the Oct. 31 deadline violated Section 8 of the Voter’s Registration Act, which states that “the personal filing of application of registration of voters shall be conducted daily in the office of the Election Officer during regular office hours. No registration shall, however, be conducted during the period starting one hundred twenty days before a regular election and ninety days before a special election.”
“There is existing jurisprudence that proves that setting an October 31 registration deadline is illegal. In 2009, the Supreme Court has already ruled that the Comelec cannot prematurely terminate thecontinuing registration of voters before the prohibitive period of election registration defined under the law – 120 days before the regular elections,” Ridon said, in an interview.
Ridon was referring to the case Palatino v. Comelec (G.R. No. 189868), which declared null and void the setting of the October 31, 2009 deadline for the May 10, 2010 elections, and directed Comelec toextend the voter registration period.
He said they have sought the extension with the Comelec, but the poll body has not acted on their plea, prompting them to elevate the matter to the SC.