The Supreme Court on Tuesday restrained the Commission on Elections from implementing its policy that compwelled voters to register using biometrics before they would be allowed to vote in next year’s general elections.
In an en banc session, the SC justices resolved to issue a temporary restraining order enjoining the poll body from carrying out its “No Bio, No Boto” policy, which provides for disenfranchisement of voters without digital photograph, signature and fingerprints in their registration records.
The SC acted on the petition filed by youth groups led by Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon last week in issuing the TRO, which is “effective immediately and continuing until further orders from the Court,” SC spokesman Theodore Te said in a media briefing.
According to Te, the SC also has also required the Comelec to answer the petition and submit its comment within a non-extensible period of 10 days from notice.
In the same order, the SC ordered the Office of the Solicitor General to submit its separate comment on the petition also within the same period.
Should the high tribunal grant the petition in ruling on the merits of the case, over three million voters who failed to register their biometrics, as required by the Comelec policy, would be allowed to vote in the May 2016 general elections.
In their petition, Ridon and company also asked the SC to nullify the Comelec resolutions issued for implementation of the policy as well as the law it was based from, Republic Act No. 10367, the law mandating biometrics voter registration.
The petitioners asserted that the new policy violates the Constitution as it adds a substantive requirement for Filipinos to be able to exercise their right to suffrage.
Petitioners stressed that the Constitution clearly states that “no literacy, property, or other substantive requirement shall be imposed on the exercise of suffrage.”
They also alleged that the new policy “violates due process as it is an unreasonable deprivation of the constitutional right to vote for millions of Filipinos who have failed to register their biometric information despite existing and active registration – in effect a voter’s re-registration – for various reasons whether personal or institutional.”
Petitioners said that over three million voters stand to lose their right to vote because of the new biometrics requirement.
Comelec records showed that a total of 3,059,601 registered voters remained without biometrics data as of last September 30 – or 5.86 percent of the 52,239,488 total registered voters for the 2016 national and local elections.
The party-list group was joined by leaders of National Union of Students of the Philippines, Anakbayan, College Editors Guild of the Philippines, League of Filipino Students, and two voters who stand to be disenfranchised because of the new policy.
Just last month, the same groups also filed a petition before the SC seeking extension of the October 31 deadline for voters’ registration set by the Comelec.
The SC has already ordered the poll body to comment on that petition.