Mindanaotoday.com | Oro city registrar backs Comelec’s voter’s list clean-up
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The Civil Registry Office in Cagayan de Oro has expressed support to the Commission on Elections’ program of cleansing the list of registered voters by providing the names of those who had died so these could be purged from the roster.
“We are ready with the list of those who died, every month, and willing to submit this to the City Comelec,” said City Civil Registrar Evangeline Tapangan in an in-person interview on Thursday, February 2, at City Hall.
But this, Tapangan said, can only be done if there is a data-sharing agreement between the City CRO and the City Comelec, detailing the responsibilities of both to keep the information of the dead with utmost confidentiality.
She said they cannot give out vital information of the dead, including registered voters, because of the Data Privacy Law (Republic Act No. 10173) that took effect in 2012, unless sharing such was with consent from relatives of the dead.
Last year, the City CRO recorded 6,947 deaths in Cagayan de Oro, including 109 fetal deaths—those who died at birth, and many of these were of voting age, 15 years old and above. The figure, however, was lower than the 8,062 deaths in 2021.
Tapangan’s assurance of support for voter’s list clean-up was announced earlier in a forum by lawyer Ramil Acol, the city election officer, who also mentioned of a forthcoming Comelec Resolution which would set guidelines on data-sharing agreement with the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Without a data-sharing agreement, Acol urged family members to show the death certificate of their relative who had died to the City Comelec.
As of Tuesday, January 31, the Comelec in Cagayan de Oro has registered 17,974 new and reactivated voters, thus increasing the city’s electorates to 390,267 for the Oct. 30 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
Acol said they registered 1,465 city residents of voting—the most registrants in a single day after a daily average of 400, even after 800 priority number stabs were given. (MT)
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