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BY PRINCE GOLEZ, Manila Reporter
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MANILA – The Senate committee on electoral reforms and people’s participation will hold a public hearing on several electoral reform measures on Nov. 8, 9 a.m. at the Session Hall.
Led by Sen. Leila de Lima as chair, the panel is expected to discuss new legislation including the proposed local absentee voting for persons with disabilities (PWDs), senior citizens, media practitioners, lawyers, and electoral staff of candidates for national elections; expanded grounds for nuisance candidate; and procedure for voters’ registration during barangay elections.
Senate Bill No. (SBN) 1013 seeks to impose a 6-month residency requirement among individuals registering to vote. The bill aims to prevent the rampant vote-buying practice during elections.
“One way of doing vote-buying is inducing voters who registered and voted in a particular city or municipality during national or local elections to register anew in another city or municipality so they can participate in the next barangay elections,” said Sen. Joel Villanueva, bill author.
If this problem is not addressed, the senator said, the sanctity of the barangay voting process will always be questionable.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV’s SBN 633 proposes to declare a person a nuisance candidate if the person has previously run at least three times for the same elective office, and that he or she garnered less than five percent of the total number of votes in his or her third or last election period.
“The presence of nuisance candidates is a product of a loose electoral system,” Trillanes said.
Meanwhile, SBN 1111 and SBN 301 provide for a local absentee voting system that allows voters such as qualified PWDs and senior citizens ease and convenience of voting.
Amid government efforts, Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said these vulnerable sectors continue to experience difficulties limiting their ability to exercise their right to vote.
A Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Barangay Affairs Department report in January showed a 14-percent decrease — from 339,144 in 2013 to 292,908 this year — in the number of registered voters with disabilities. It also said that 51,000 of the registered PWD voters suffer from physical disabilities.
Registered senior citizens in the country amount to over six million votes, according to the poll body.
“The inaccessibility of registration centers and voting precincts is only one of the many impediments that make the process more challenging for members of these sectors. Mobility problems, which are prevalent in both PWDs and senior citizens, remain to be one of the reasons why some fail to participate in electoral processes,” said Zubiri.
SBN 1111 filed by de Lima also seeks to extend a reasonable accommodation to government officials, media practitioners, and election lawyers who are unable to cast their vote because of work.
“The right to suffrage is the essence of democracy. It is both a manner through which we can hold our officials accountable and a way in which we can express our aspirations for our future,” de Lima, a former election law practitioner, said./PN
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