MindanaoToday.com | Names of the dead still in list of voters
By; Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The list of voters still includes those who died in the last six years because outright delisting them has legal impediments, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia, in a press conference here yesterday, said Section 29 of Republic Act No. 8189, the Voter’s Registration Act of 1996, provides for the cancellation of registration of the dead.
The law, however, requires that the Election Registration Board (ERB) must first cancel the voter’s registration records. The Board is chaired by the city/municipal election officer with a school official and the local civil registrar as members.
A certification of death from the office of Local Civil Registrar (LCR) is also required which is issued only upon payment of a P15 certification fee. The Comelec has no budget for certification fees of about 300 to 400 thousand deaths of voters in a year.
Garcia cited a portion of Section 29 of R.A. No. 9180 which reads: “The Local Civil Registrar shall submit each month a certified list of persons who died during the previous month to the Election Officer of the place where the deceased are registered.”
He said there have been instances when persons may have died in other places other than one’s residence, thus securing certifications of death would be difficult.
He said he already called for a meeting with the Philippine Association of Civil Registrars (PACR) so that this requirement can be complied with, but LCRs are directly under the policies of their respective local government units.
A computer program application (app) where PACR members are encouraged to share information on deaths of registered voters has already been designed, still this has not been utilized for information sharing that could cleanse the voter’s list.
Under existing laws, it is difficult to update the list of registered voters in real time, Garcia was reported as saying in an earlier news conference.
DATA PRIVACY
Compliance on the monthly submission of a certified list of persons who died has been dismal–if not totally ignored–since the enactment of Republic Act No. 10173, the Data Privacy Act of 2012 because a death certificate is a document that contains vital personal information to the deceased voter and members of the bereaved family.
R.A. 10173 defines personal information as something that “refers to any information whether recorded in material form or not, from which the identity of an individual is apparent or can be reasonably and directly ascertained by the entity holding the information, or when put together with other information would directly and certainly identify and individual.”
Currently, the Comelec has the Automatic Fingerprint Information System (AFIS) in place which enables voting precincts to determine if a voter will be casting a vote more than once, a deterrence for “ghost voters.”
The office of the LCR in this city has been urging bereaved families to report the death of a member, with a copy of a death certificate, soonest time possible.
CLEANSING
In 2023, the Comelec listed 67,839,861 registered electors in the October 30 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) and about 76 percent actually voted. Those who had died were among those in the remaining 24 percent.
Garcia said they have already deactivated about 5.3 million names in the voter’s list in preparation for the May 12, 2025 midterm elections on the basis on their failure to cast their votes in the last two consecutive elections.
The 5.3-million names stricken out from the voter’s list include those who died in the past six years. Records from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) indicate there were about 2.2 million who died in a three-year period, 2020 to 2022.
As of Wednesday, August 21, the Comelec has registered 2.6 million voters and facilitated over 400 thousand applications for transfer and petitions for correction of entries.
ANTIQUATED
“Our election laws are antiquated,” Garcia said, particularly referring to R.A. No.
8189 and more so with the almost four-decade old Omnibus Election Code, Batas Pambansa (PB) Bilang 881, that took effect in December 1985.
Although two sections of B.P. Blg. 881 had already been repealed under the Fair Elections Act of 2019 and another two sections after the Electoral Reforms Law of 1987, still there are provisions that are subject to varied interpretations.
Among existing election laws that should be amended by Congress are issues on political dynasty—which is already enshrined in the Constitution, varied forms and ways of vote-buying, election spending that limits to P3 per voter, and cleansing of voter’s list, the Comelec chairperson said. (30)
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