Comelec purges close to 600K overseas voters

“After due deliberation of the list of overseas voters where registration records were due for deactivations, the Board ordered the deactivation of 265,084 overseas voters who failed to vote in the 2016 and 2019 National and Local Elections, as shown in their voting records,” the Comelec said in an order dated November 13. (File Photo By Elmer B. Domingo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MANILA — Close to 600,000 overseas voters have been deactivated for failing to participate in the country’s last two elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) reported on Tuesday.

Based on Order of Deactivation by the Resident Election Registration Board (RERB) of the Office of Overseas Voting (OFOV), it ordered the deactivation of another 265,084 overseas voters for not joining the 2016 and 2019 polls.

“After due deliberation of the list of overseas voters where registration records were due for deactivations, the Board ordered the deactivation of 265,084 overseas voters who failed to vote in the 2016 and 2019 National and Local Elections, as shown in their voting records,” the Comelec said in an order dated November 13.

This brings the total number of deactivated overseas voters to 578,185, following the removal of an initial 313,301 voters from the overseas voters list on November 8 for the same reason.

It also directed the OFOV to remove from the overseas database the voting records the overseas voters that failed to vote in the 2016 and 2019 elections.

Likewise, the RERB ordered to submit the updated data to the Information Technology Department of the Comelec.

The order was signed by Eliza Sabile-David, RERB chairman and Edgardo Castro, RERB member.

The Comelec earlier announced that the registration period for Filipino citizens overseas will start on December 16 and will run until September 30, 2021 for the May 2022 presidential polls.

There is a total of 1,822,173 registered overseas voters in the May 2019 polls, according to the poll body’s data.