BONTOC, Mountain Province – The Provincial election Office announced that there will be at least 5,500 new voters who will be participating in the upcoming October 31, 2016 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections in the different parts of the province.
Provincial election Supervisor said of the 5,500 newly registered voters, 3,433 registered for the SK elections and fall under the age group 15-17 while more than 2,100 voters fall under the prescribed voting age of 18 years old and above.
He said the additional voters visited the different municipal elections offices in Barlig, Bauko, Besao, Bontoc, Natonin, Sabangan, Adanga, Sagada, Tadian and Paracelis during the limited registration period from July 15-30, 2016.
Aside from the newly registered voters, Lampac revealed there were 309 individuals who applied for reactivation considering that they were not able to vote twice or failed to validate, 28 applied for change of name, 129 applied for correction of entries, 1 applied for the reinstatement of name in the list of voters and 28 applied for reactivation and change of names or correction of entries.
“We are elated that we were able to reach the 100,000 voting population for the upcoming SK and barangay polls We thank the electorate of the province for heeding the call of the Commission on elections to register for the October polls so that their voices could be heard during the next political exercise,” Lampac stressed.
It was learned that there were only 09,333 registered voters in the whole province that were allowed to participate in the May 9, 2016 elections.
The newly registered voters were confirmed by the different election registration boards in the different municipalities during their simultaneous hearings conducted last August 11, 2016 in order to ascertain whether or not their names will be included in the new voter’s list for the different precincts provincewide.
Lampac expressed his gratitude to the residents of the province for having patronized the prescribed registration period for them to be able to actively participate in the upcoming October SK and barangay elections, saying that there is a need for the registered voters to cast their votes during the elections in order for their voices to be heard in the selection of their next set of barangay officials who will lead them in the next three years.
According to him, the Comelec is busy preparing for the upcoming activities in line with the October SK and barangay elections in order to avoid problems that might affect the integrity of the manual elections.
Considering that there are no concrete actions from Congress on whether or not to postpone the October SK and Barangay elections, Lampac pointed out that all the programmed activities for the scheduled elections will push through unless otherwise Congress will approve the bill pending for the postponement of the elections and eventually signed by the President into law.
By HENT
