By SAMMY JULIAN
Manila News Bureau Chief
MANILA — Within just a month, overseas voter registration (OVR) for the 2016 presidential election cycle increased by more than 50 percent — from 24,366 in July to 37,479 in August.
This is the highest rate of increase so far in OVR since it started on May 6, according to Department of Foreign Affairs–Overseas Voting Secretariat (DFA-OVS),
Last month’s tally set a new milestone for this period by bringing the four-month total of new overseas voter registrants to 101,351, the DFA-OVS noted. There were 18,670 registrants in May and 20,836 in June.
In June, for the first time in the 11-year electoral history of Philippine overseas voting, OVR breached the one million mark. As of Sept. 5, total overseas voter stocks stood at 1,076,524.
Office of Civil Security and Consular Concerns undersecretary Rafael E. Seguis, concurrently the chair of DFA-OVS, said that at the current pace of registration, overseas voter stock could reach over two million for the 2016 presidential election.
“Attaining this goal can definitely be a game changer,” Seguis said in a statement.
The August tally, broken down by region, is as follows: Foreign Service Posts (FSPs) in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) processed 20,079 new overseas voter registrants, 7,242 from the Americas, 4,278 in the European FSPs, and 3,540 from the Asia-Pacific (2,340 from Philippine Overseas Voter’s Registration Centers).
The Top 10 FSPs are Riyadh (7,916), Abu Dhabi (3,420), Dubai (2,805), Jeddah (2,332), San Francisco (1,655), Singapore (1,193), New York (1,076), Los Angeles (1,034), London (887), and Toronto (813).
Almost 54 percent of last month’s production came from the FSPs in MENA.
This, despite the suspension of overseas voter registration activities at various hotspots, including Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and the Gaza strip, in view of the deteriorating security situation thereat.
They attribute their success and enhanced performance to the DFA’s issuance of Foreign Service Circular No. 160-2014, which integrates overseas voter registration with the passport renewal process.
Another challenge confronting the FSPs, according to DFA-OVS, is aging voter registration equipment that constantly malfunctions.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) provided the equipment during the previous election cycles. DFA-OVS is closely coordinating with Comelec on how to address the situation.
Both the Secretariat and the Commission are confident that a solution is at hand despite the meager resources available to Comelec for overseas voter activities since it is not an election year./PN
