The Commission on Elections (Comelec) admitted Friday it is not sure if all 68 million registered voters at present are accurate, as it called on Congress to allow the body to open re-registration of voters to cleanse the list for the 2028 polls.
In an interview over DZBB, poll chairman George Garcia said the Comelec will push for the re-registration of voters to make the national list of registered voters more accurate for the presidential and vice presidential elections.
Garcia said the poll body cannot act on its own to implement the national re-registration of voters since it needs legislation.
“We will ask Congress to consider our proposal after the 2025 elections so that we’ll go back to zero. Let’s replace the present list of voters, we’re not even sure if that 68 million voters are still accurate,” he added.
The planned re-registration will help cleanse the national list and erase any doubts of voters who encounter double registrants.
The Comelec chief also said they recently discovered 491,000 double or multiple registrants in the current list through its automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS).
“With the re-registration, this will help update their biometrics, since the oldest set of fingerprints available dates back to 2003,” Garcia explained.
Aside from updating their data, he said there is a need to procure new technologyan automated biometric identification system (ABIS)—for general registration.