Voter registration for the 2016 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections ends tomorrow, the 30th of July 2016. If history repeats itself—and it always does—that means a great number of people have been trooping to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) offices trying to beat the deadline. It’s a fair bet that many of them will be invoking the new President’s distaste for making the public wait in long queues.
The Comelec hasn’t been shy about following the President’s lead in dropping the use of honorifics, and there’s no reason to believe that it will not echo his desire to do away with long lines. In fact, the elimination of long queues has been a kind of Holy Grail for the commission for quite some time now.
Thus, prior to the 2016 elections, the Comelec actually started voter registration in 2014, giving people more than a year and a half to register as voters. Satellite registration —the practice of
holding registration events outside of Comelec offices—became a regular thing. Early in the period, despite constant reminders coming from all quarters, relatively few people paid any attention. The Comelec work week was even adjusted to make sure that people could register on Sundays. And yet, it was only as the deadline approached that people started turning up in huge numbers and the lines started to grow in length yet again.
Interestingly, it wasn’t just regular folks coming in late; deadline beaters came from everywhere. Members of the media, prominent netizens and even the occasional high-ranking government official were among those who tried squeeze in before registration shut its doors on the last day of October 2015. Everyone, in other words, including those who had actually helped spread the message of registration.
In the end, it didn’t matter that voter-registration sites had been set up in malls, or that registration took place nearly every day—weekends and holidays included—or that the mass media had made the voter-
registration message a daily fixture in their broadcasts. People came when they knew they were running out of time. With only a little more than 1.6 million registrations logged by the beginning of this week, I think it’s safe to say that things haven’t changed all that much.
On a somewhat related note, scads of voter IDs languish in Comelec offices nationwide. In the fifth district of Manila, for instance, more than 50,000 IDs lie unclaimed. So, here are some pro tips: first, the Comelec does not send out voter IDs by mail. Neither are voter IDs supposed to be released to barangay officials, no matter what assurances to the contrary you might receive.
Second, voter IDs have to be claimed—either personally or through an authorized representative—at the local Comelec office where you are registered. And finally, just a gentle reminder: you don’t need the voter ID for voting. What you need is to be registered to vote. So go do that first. You only have until tomorrow.
James Arthur B. Jimenez is director of the Commission on Elections’s Education and Information Department.
