Close to 3M voters register for barangay, SK polls

MANILA–Close to 3 million individuals have registered in the recently concluded voters’ registration for the October Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) polls, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said on Monday.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez revealed that initial figures show a total of 2,764,745 applications for registration were filed before the Offices of Election Officers (OECs) nationwide.

“As of April 29 (not final figures though), there are a total of 2,764,745 registrants nationwide,” he said.

Jimenez noted that Region IV-A (Calamba, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon) has the most number of registrants at 410,397.

Of the figure, a total of 705,570 are registrants for the SK polls, age ranges from 15-17 years old.

“The figures are registrants. Some Election Registration Boards (ERBs) are still working so number of ‘approved registrations’ is still moving,” the poll body official explained.

With this, Jimenez admitted that the figure has exceeded their expectations. “Yes, we expected only about 2.5 million.”

He attributed the positive response of registrants to the satellite registrations, which were held in barangays.

“Satellite registrations helped a lot, both in terms of awareness and in actual registration turnout,” Jimenez said.

He added: “I would give our field offices, officials, and personnel, the lion’s share of the credit for this successful registration period.”

The nationwide voter registration started last November 7, 2016 and ended on April 29.