THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has started purging its voter’s list in preparation for the scheduled barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections next year.
Comelec Elections and Barangay Affairs Department Director Teopisto E. Elnas Jr. said the process of removing voters, who are already candidates for deactivation, is now ongoing.
Based on the Voter’s Registration Act of 1996, the following are grounds for deactivation of a voter: being sentenced by final judgment to suffer imprisonment for not less than one year; adjudged by final judgment of committing crime involving disloyalty to the government, such as rebellion, sedition, violation of the anti-subversion, and firearms laws, or any crime against national security; and, being declared by competent authority to be insane or incompetent.
Other reasons for deactivation include not being able to vote in the two successive preceding regular elections as shown by their voting records; being ordered by the Court to be excluded from registration; and, loss of one’s Filipino citizenship.
Elnas said they will also be removing voters who have recently died from their list using the monthly Local Civil Registrar as basis.
For the 2019 May midterm polls, the Comelec has registered over 61.8 million voters.
Elnas that they aim to complete the updated voter’s list before the resume of the voter registration next month.
“Before the voter registration activity, the Comelec will conduct an updating of records in order to cleanse the list of voters,” Elnas said in an interview on radio.
The next round of voter registration runs from August 1 to September 30.