Commission on Elections Region 11 Assistant Regional Election Director Marlon Casquejo considers the conduct of the elections in the city successful because the canvassing and consolidation of vote transmission reached 90% on Monday night, May 10. (Earl O. Condeza/davaotoday.com)
DAVAO CITY — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in this region is looking at the possibility of glitches in voters’ data as the main cause of the disappearance of several people’s names on their list.
Jonathan Casquejo, Comelec XI election assistant, said the names of missing voters might have been included part of the files that were corrupted.
Casquejo said that during the process of certifying voters last year, they sent notices five to six days to repeat biometric test of alarmed voters.
“We do not know the voters, we cannot erase from the list,” Casquejo said
Meanwhile, Maysah Casar, election assistant in Davao City’s first district said, “those who are not on the list of voters are not allowed to vote.”
“We do not have proof [of those] who claim to have biometrics, proofs of voter’s certification which are needed to confirm that they are active voters,” Casar said.
Casar considered “double entry” as one of the reason that voter’s name was removed from the list of voters. Double entry, according to Casar, is when one who was already registered and re-registered during the time when they called for biometrics as a requirement to be a valid voter.
Jasmen Evasco rushed to the Comelec office in the morning on Monday to raise her concern of being delisted from the voters’ list. She was told by the
information desk that she was of “inactive status”. She was not explained of what it meant.
“I told them that I already have biometrics, it is stated on their website. They told me that their website is not updated, where would I go now if their website is not updated?” she asked.
She was also told by the officer that she should have checked her voter status days before the election. However, Evasco said that she was okay with what Comelec puts on their website, not knowing it was not
updated.
Evasco was supposed to vote at the University of Southeastern Philippines polling precinct, under the first congressional district in Davao City.
Meanwhile, a voter from the second district, Milandro Dandan was also unable to find his name on the voters’ list at a polling precinct in Sasa.
Dandan, who was absent at work during the election day, said that he secured his biometrics but his voter’s ID was not issued yet.
Comelec XI Assistant Regional Election Director Marlon Casquejo said that the raised concerns of the voters who were not listed “cannot be verified unless we will look up their data, so anyone can allege that he/she is listed or not.”
Despite the number of voters rushed at the Comelec office and the reports of dysfunctional vote counting machine in some polling precincts, Casquejo considered the election day as generally
successful.
“Voting was not suspended, it still continue but proceed to manual voting to those precinct where VCMs were damaged,” he said. (davaotoday.com)
