Close to 10.5 million registered voters in the country have been either deactivated or deleted from the list of voters for the May 9 polls, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) reported on Thursday.
Data from the poll body revealed that a total of 7,236,952 deactivated voters and 3,246,262 names have been deleted from the voter’s list.
Among the deactivated voters, 7,229,493 had failed to vote in the last two national elections, 3,993 were excluded due to court orders and 2,718 were declared insane or incompetent by authorities.
Also deactivated were 536 voters who were sentenced to more than one-year imprisonment, 134 who failed to validate, 52 who lost their Filipino citizenship; and 26 who were sentenced for committing crimes against national security.
Among deleted voters, 1,490,678 voters transferred to another city or municipality; 892,627 were double registrants and 755,769 already died.
Also deleted are 64,320 with double entries; and 42,868 who applied as overseas voters.
There were a total of 6,950,449 newly registered voters while there were 1,520,500 Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) voters, who have or will turn 18 years old by Election Day, and have been included automatically in the voters’ list.
The country has a total of 65,831,792 registered voters for the forthcoming polls.
Meanwhile, the Comelec reported that there are a total of 84,221 approved applications for absentee voting.
The majority of the applicants are members of the Philippine National Police — 48,698; followed by the Philippine Army — 32,786; Philippine Air Force — 4,261; Department of Education — 3,075; and members of the media, 953.
A total of 9,346 applications have been denied.
Those who avail of absentee voting will cast their votes from April 27 to 29. They will be voting for national positions only, one each for president and vice president, 12 senators, and one party-list group.
On the other hand, the poll body also reported that as of 11 a.m. on Thursday, a total of 63,856,233 or 94.68 percent of official ballots have already been printed at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.
The Comelec will be printing a total of 67,442,616 to be used in the May elections.
Out of the 17 regions, only the ballots from the National Capital Region have not been completed.
As of Wednesday, 51.02 percent or 3,735,978 ballots have so far been printed, out of the 7,322,361 ballots that need to be printed.
Comelec Commissioner George Garcia said among those already printed, 72 percent or 48,504,708 ballots have been exited or have already completed the whole processing, such as verification and re-verification.
He said almost 179,000 ballots were tagged as defective and were subject to reprinting, accounting for 0.28 percent of the total printed ballots.
“This is still very manageable, just a small figure. What’s important is we see these kinds of problems and discrepancies,” he said.
Ballot printing started at the National Printing Office on Jan. 20 with the manual ballots for local absentee voting, followed by the manual ballots for overseas voting, and the automated election system ballot for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the regional police of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) have identified 102 towns and 3 cities in the region as areas of concern in the May 9 elections.
Of these, 16 towns and two cities were under the red category, most of which are in the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao, and Basilan because of the presence of threat groups, the police said.