The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has been in the news lately, except that for the most part, it’s not the kind of news anyone would be terribly happy about: first, there was the talk of fake voter IDs emerging once again; and second, a rather disappointing development about something that a lot of people had been looking forward to.
‘Fake news’
The notion—the “fake news”—that a person has to be a registered voter in order to receive government aid during this Covid-19 national health crisis, seems to have given a boost to the business of making and selling fake voter identification cards. Just last week, two people were arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation for peddling fake voter IDs—in exchange for money, they would provide the poor chump with a bogus voter ID which, to be fair, would probably fool most people. But no matter how convincing those IDs may have been, fake they certainly were; for one thing, the signature on those IDs were from a Chairman who has long since left the Comelec. More important, the Comelec stopped issuing new voter IDs in 2012, anticipating the launch of the National ID system.
As to the idea that seems to have been capitalized on by the scammers, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of that. Early on, when the government first started distributing “ayuda,” the Comelec already announced that voter registration status didn’t matter when it came to deciding who would receive government Covid-19 aid. This reflected the DILG’s own statement on the same issue. And yet the wrong notion persists.
That’s bothersome for two reasons. First, scammers can use the public’s ignorance to separate them from their money; and second, it’s putting undue pressure on people to go out of their homes to visit the Comelec just to try to get an ID that isn’t being issued anymore, and which shouldn’t even be necessary anyway. What makes this worse is that many of those being fooled are senior citizens—the very people we should be discouraging from needlessly venturing out into the path of the still running rampant coronavirus.
Sad news
Everyone’s been waiting for voter registration to resume for about two months now. Sadly, the Commission on Elections has held off on restarting the voter registration period it halted on March 9, 2020. At the time, it was thought that the stoppage—a direct response to the pandemic—would be lifted by the end of the month. Two community quarantine extensions later, the voter registration centers remain silent.
Prior to this decision, it was believed that voter registration might possibly be resumed as early as July. However, with the sudden increase of new cases daily—along with the emergence of Covid-19 cases in places previously reporting zero incidences —the emerging consensus is that it would be safer for the general public for Comelec to approach resumption a bit more slowly. Now, by most estimates, the resumption of voter registration is expected to come in August or September, with some of the gloomier predictions foreseeing a January 2021 reopening. This doesn’t mean, however, that the Comelec offices are dark.
In Intramuros, the various offices of the Comelec are functional, albeit with skeleton crews, every day except Fridays and weekends. On Fridays, the offices are disinfected. In the field, Comelec offices are back up and running as well, with plastic barriers, hand sanitizing stations, and physical distancing reminders in place. However, while voter registration transactions with the public—filing of applications, registrant interviews with the Election Officers, and the taking of the registrant’s biometrics—remain off the table, Comelec’s Election Officers still come to work, continuously refining their Covid-19 precautions and carrying out all the back-end operations the public hears about only rarely, such as election registration board hearings.