Low turnout in extended voters' registration

MANILA, Philippines�The Commission on Elections (Comelec) reported a generally low turnout in its five-day extended voter registration that ended Tuesday, save for some urban areas where local offices were swamped by last-minute registrants.

�Turnout was slow. There were really just a few applicants, probably because we already hit the peak and accommodated most of them (in October),� said Comelec Chair Jose Melo.

Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said last-minute registrants overwhelmed offices in Marikina and Quezon City, an occurrence he attributed to �Filipino tradition.�

�Turnout in precincts is pretty low but text messages from the field reveal that in some offices, in mostly urban areas like Marikina and Quezon City, they were swamped with applicants,� Larrazabal said.

Still, the Comelec stood firm that enlistment end as scheduled at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, unlike in the last days of the normal registration period that ended Oct. 31 when poll offices remained open till midnight.

Counting machines

Melo, meanwhile, announced the arrival of 4,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines at North Harbor on Monday.

�They are still in container vans. We are waiting for the representatives of SmartMatic to open them,� Melo said.

Another shipment of 3,200 units is expected at 4 a.m. today. Melo said the two shipments comprise �almost 10 percent� of the machines that would be used in the automated polls nationwide.

The machines will be subjected to �between five to six tests,� including mock elections, before they are delivered to their assigned precincts across the country, he said.

Until January, please

Melo shot down demands to further stretch the extended registration period until January.

�Remember that enlistment is just a step in the registration process. After listing down the new names, we still need to publish their names, accommodate possible challenges questioning the inclusion of some, set hearings for these and resolve them. Only after these objections are resolved can we say that the registration process is finished,� Melo explained.

Comelec officials did not offer any estimate of the number of applicants who were accommodated during the extension ordered by the Supreme Court, which upheld a petition by the Kabataan party-list group.

The high court dismissed as invalid the Comelec�s advancing the deadline for registration, noting that the Voter�s Registration Act of 1996 provides that the final day of registration should not be more than 120 days before an election.

The original registration period stretched from Dec. 1, 2008, to Oct. 31 this year.

Printing 49.3 ballots

Melo said that the National Printing Office would begin on Jan. 25 printing 49.3 million ballots to be used in the May elections. This is equivalent to the number of voters accounted for as of Nov. 16, and does not include those who enlisted during the extended registration.

�Statistically unfeasible�

Larrazabal explained that a 100-percent turnout of voters is �statistically unfeasible,� which means not all registered voters are expected to vote in May.

�Usually, there�s an 80 percent turnout and that�s already the highest,� he said.

�What happens is that 20 percent of the ballots serve as a buffer in case there are more voters than usual,� Larrazabal explained.

Melo noted that should the Comelec wait for the tally of new registrants who trooped to its offices this month, �we might have to wait until June to finish the printing of ballots.�