MANILA, 28 March 2007 — Over 20 percent of overseas absentee votes for the senatorial and party-list elections, which starts on April 14 until May 14, will be cast by overseas Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia.

The Commission on Elections said the total registration for registration for Saudi Arabia has reached 127,947, with 87,358 signing up at the embassy in Riyadh and the International School in Alkhobar and the other 40,589 at the consulate in Jeddah.

COMELEC Commissioner in charge for Overseas Absentee Voting Florentino Tuason Jr. said these figures also include those who signed up during field registrations conducted by the Riyadh embassy and the Jeddah consulate as well as at the satellite registration centers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) main office.

Worldwide registration reached 504,122, with 142,665 (28 percent) signing up in 2006 and 361,457 (72 percent) in 2003.

Unfortunately, Tuason said, voters in Saudi Arabia will have to cast their ballots at the embassy in Riyadh, the consulate in Jeddah or at the International School in Alkhobar.

They will form part of the 329,731 (65.8 percent) registrants for personal voting. The rest of the 174,391 (34.2 percent) registrants will be included in the scope for postal voting.

Tuason said, however, he would continue to push for internet or on-line voting since “it is the voting process of the future.”

In fact, the COMELEC in July will conduct a non-binding internet voting among the overseas Filipinos in Singapore as a sort of pilot test and at the same time to test the security and effectivity of this mode of voting.

It has also signed a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Postal Corporation (Philpost) for the handling of all outgoing and incoming ballots for the overseas absentee vote in the May midterm polls.

“Voting by mail would not have been possible without the assistance of Philpost personnel and infrastructure,” Tuason said at a forum on overseas absentee voting.

The deal includes a special complex to service postal voting at the annex building of Philpost’s main office in Manila. This includes a sorting area similar to a hospital nursery with its own “watchers’ booth” separated by a glass window from the actual sorters.

“There are even security cameras inside the sorting room,” Tuason told said.

Tuason said the complex is already operational. He added that more than 179,000 ballots bound for about 59 overseas posts where postal voting has been approved are now being mailed.

“It is an assembly-line kind of process,” Tuason said.

Tuason said he had originally wanted voting by mail to be the standard operating procedure for all countries but the postal systems of some were not at par with standards.

Tuason said that of the 504,122 OFWs registered as overseas absentee voters, 191,760 are in Asia-Pacific countries, 218,260 in the Middle East, 27,240 in North and South America and 48,446 in Europe.

A total of 18,404 Filipino seafarers serving in ocean-going vessels have also registered as overseas absentee voters.

The countries with the most number of OFW absentee voters are Hong Kong with 96,505; Saudi Arabia, 58,245; United Arab Emirates, 35,304; and Singapore, 26,835.