A senior member of the House of Representatives on Wednesday appealed to the Commission on Elections to be “fair” to party-list group and that “there must not be a repeat of the ballot design that was detrimental to such groups, as in the last elections.”
In the 2019 elections, the party-list groups were placed on the sheet after the local positions, making many voters think they were done voting and had no more vote to mark, Deputy Speaker and Bagong Henerasyon Rep. Bernadette Herrera said in a statement.
What happened in that election, Herrera said, “was tantamount to disfranchisement because the misled or mistaken voters were denied the chance to choose the party-list group they would have voted for.”
As a result, she said, “the composition of the House today would have been different if that fiasco did not happen.”
She reminded the poll body “to be circumspect this time around.”
At the same time, Herrera supported the idea that voting precincts be deployed to hospitals, isolation centers, and temporary care facilities.
In addition, she said, “there should still be voting precincts in the jails.”
She said the detainees should be vaccinated against COVID-19. “There are millions of Sinovac doses to spare to make sure the detainees get vaccinated. The jails are closed spaces where COVID-19 can spread fast because there is no physical distancing in the jails.”
Those detained in city jails, police stations, municipal jails and provincial jails are not convicted felons and they have the right to vote for the national elective positions, she added.