Mindanaotoday.com | Data privacy hinders voters’ list cleansing
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The list of voters which the Commission on Election (Comelec) posts in polling precincts may include names of those who are dead because cleansing it has a legal impediment, an election officer said.
“We used to have a list of those who died from the City Civil Registry Office, every month, but that stopped when the Data Privacy Act took effect,” said lawyer Ramil Acol, the city election officer, in a Cagayan de Oro Press Club forum Wednesday, Jan. 4.
Data Privacy Act (Republic Act No. 10173) which took effect Sept. 8, 2012, stipulates that “personal data should never be collected, processed and stored by any organization without one’s explicit consent, unless otherwise provided by law.”
Acol said the CCRO in Cagayan de Oro is requiring for a Memorandum of Agreement document between the Comelec and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) before it can share a list of persons whose deaths have been duly certified, so as not to violate the provisions of R.A. 10173.
“We are appealing to family members of voters who have died to personally show to us the death certificates,” said the Comelec Cagayan de Oro head, and assured the public names of the dead would no longer appear in voters’ list.
Cleansing of the voters’ list was one of the concerns raised in the media forum relative to the ongoing 42-day registration of new voters for this year’s Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (village and youth councils) elections.
Aside from its office at Burgos Street in Barangay 7, Comelec Cagayan de Oro has been accepting and processing voter’s registration applications since December 12 last year until January 31, this year in 14 villages, three malls, and five junior and senior high schools.
Acol said based on usual 5% new-voters-registration target, they intend to reach out to 19,000 residents who have been in Cagayan de Oro for at least a year, 15 years old and above – including those who have been “deactivated” for failure to vote in two consecutive elections.
So far, Comelec Cagayan de Oro has been registering over 300 eligible voters daily.
In May 2022 presidential elections, Cagayan de Oro had 372,293 registered voters (including those already resting in graves) and roughly 85 percent of them went to the polling precincts to cast their votes. Northern Mindanao (Region 10) then had 3,060,485 voters.
Comelec-10 is also targeting to register new voters, five percent of its previously registered ones, and that would be over 150,000.
In the same forum, Regional Election Director Renato B. Magbutay said that those aged 15 to 30 years old have to register twice because they will also be casting their ballots for SK and Barangay candidates.
Magbutay, however, clarified only those aged 15 to 25 years old would be eligible to file their certificates of candidacy for the youth council, although they would be voted upon by all SK members aged 15 to 30 years old.
He said voters’ listing would end Jan. 31 to give Comelec time to prepare should the Supreme Court set the BSK elections in May this year, as suggested by lawyer Romulo B. Macalintal who filed a case before the SC, questioning the legality in postponing the BSK polls originally set in December 2022.
Meantime, the BSK voters’ registration team from Comelec Cagayan de Oro would be at SM City Uptown mall (beside Surplus) on Friday, Jan. 6.
The team would then reach out to high school students: Jan. 9 (Monday) at Cagayan de Oro City School (Nazareth), Jan. 10 (Tuesday) at Misamis Oriental General Comprehensive HS (Velez St.), Jan. 11 (Wednesday) at Xavier University HS (Pueblo de Oro), Jan. 12 (Thursday) at Agusan National HS, and Jan. 13 (Friday) at Pedro “Oloy” N. Roa Sr. HS (Canitoan).
On Saturday, Jan. 14, FS Catanico village in the eastern side of the city would be Comelec Cagayan de Oro’s satellite voters’ registration site.
From Jan. 16 (Monday) until Jan. 31, except Sundays, the satellite registration site for BSK elections would be at the Robinsons Cagayan de Oro, Limketkai Center from 10 am to 5 pm. (MT)
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