MANILA, 6 November 2006 — Only 139,151 Filipinos have signed up in the twice-extended new registration for overseas absentee voters, but the number was enough to increase the overall worldwide total to more than half million, records of the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat at the Department of Foreign Affairs (OAVS-DFA) showed.
Election Commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr., in charge of OAV affairs, said the new registrants and 364,000 who signed up in 2003 add up to 503,151, enough to affect the results of next year’s senatorial and party-list elections.
Almost 20,000 overseas Filipino took advantage of the two-month extension given by Comelec. The registration period, which started September 2005 was to have ended Aug. 31 but the Comelec extended this, first to Sept. 30 and finally to Oct. 31.
The biggest number of registrants signed up at the Comelec satellite offices at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration in Manila (39,495 or 28 percent) and at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (47,261 or 35 percent).
Of the 19,731 who signed up in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia accounted for 42 percent, or 8,427. The Saudi figure was double what it would have been with the original deadline.
Added to the 97,000 who registered in 2003, the overall total for Saudi Arabia is 105,427. Officials said the number of voters in Saudi Arabia could increase since many of those who registered at the POEA and NAIA in Manila were bound for the Kingdom.
Almost half of the regis-trants (4,028) presented themselves before the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh while the other half enlisted at the consulate in Jeddah (2,105) and the satellite registration site at the International Philippine School in Alkhobar (2,294).
The United Arab Emirates, which also hosts a lot of OFWs, came up with only 6,045. The others came from Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Iran, and in Africa.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Hong Kong had the most number of registrants at 6,322, about half of the 12,790 registrants in that region. The other countries provided the other half of the registrants, among them Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, and Japan.
Registration in the US and Canada reached 12,366. This was dominated by registration in the United States, which stood at 8,626. Registration there was concentrated in San Francisco (3,335), which was even more than registration in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver in Canada (2,563). In Europe, the registrants did not even reach 8,000 and out of the total 7,488, 24 percent came from Italy (1,728).
Voting by Mail, Internet
Tuason also said Internet voting is now being considered in lieu personal and postal voting in selected places where there is a substantial number of Filipinos using the Internet. He has scheduled a demonstration on the process although he doubts whether it can be in placed in time for the 2007 elections. He earlier presented the idea before a technical working group of the House committees on suffrage and on constitutional amendments.
According to Tuason, the commission was “seriously considering” Internet voting in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Italy because these places have the largest number of registered voters with access to the Internet.
The Comelec is also reconsidering the use of postal voting by OFWs in Mideastern countries, including the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon and Qatar but not in Saudi Arabia. Legislators have noted that voting by mail in Saudi Arabia would be impractical because of Kingdom’s address system.
Tuason said the determination of personal voting versus postal voting had to do with the cost (P10 million for personal and P57 million for postal).
Former OFW and director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy Miguel Bolos said the cost is big for postal voting since expenses (such as transportation to voting sites) would be passed on to the government “which is but proper.”
