First 3 days of overseas absentee voting smooth-running

Overseas Filipinos will be voting for national positions only, senators (12) and one party-list representative. (File Photo: jon mannion/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

MANILA — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday said the three days since overseas voting for the May elections started have been smooth sailing with only minimal problems encountered.

“The first few days have been relatively smooth. No major problems encountered where the voting proceeded,” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in an interview.

“Meron tayo mga lugar kung saan nagkaroon problems (where there have been problems) but these have been addressed and dealt with rather speedily in most cases. We’ve also had a problem in the Middle East, specifically kung saan nagkaroon ng problema (where there has been a problem) with voter verification,” he added.

He said the hard copy of voters lists to be used in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia were delayed in the Customs, so the Comelec sent downloadable files to the post to ensure availability of the list for voting purposes.

Jimenez added that post personnel are in constant and direct communication with the Office for Overseas Voting which facilitates identification of individual voters.

The poll body official noted that they will submit a report on the issues encountered and how they resolved them.

“We will submit a fuller report on that later in the day and hopefully in the remaining 28 or 27 days of the election hindi na natin ma-experience ‘yun (we won’t experience it anymore),” he said. “Just remember tatlong araw pa lang ang halalan natin (it’s been just three days).

So this is exactly the time when we expect these issues to show up para ma-resolved.

”

There are more than 1.8 million registered Filipinos overseas.

Overseas Filipinos will be voting for national positions only, senators (12) and one party-list representative.

The one-month overseas voting period started last Saturday, April 13 and will run until May 13.