MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has extended the deadline for the filing of applications for local absentee voting (LAV) to March 31, from the original deadline of March 7.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said yesterday the LAV deadline was extended to encourage more members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), teachers and media who will be working on Election Day to register and vote.
Bautista said voting will be from April 27 to 29 and covers only national posts such as president, vice president, senators and party-list groups.
Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon posted in her Twitter account @commrguanzon that the “Comelec en banc moved the deadline.”
She said as of March 1, a total of 6,613 voters have applied for LAV but none so far came from the media.
The AFP accounted for 5,522 applicants – 4,433 and 911 from the Philippine Army and Philippine Air Force, respectively. There were 967 applicants from the PNP.
A total of 96 applicants were from the Comelec, 19 from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology; seven from the Department of Education, and one each from the Bureau of Fire Protection and House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal.
Bautista, meanwhile, noted that the training of teachers who would comprise the three-man Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) has started.
The BEI is tasked to administer voting and counting at the clustered polling precincts.
“The teachers seemed happy with the hands-on training on new machines as they are easier to operate. They also said that the training video and website are helpful as well,” Guanzon said.
Before this, the Comelec had subjected to training the provincial election supervisor and regional election directors on the use of the vote counting machines (VCMs).
VCMs are the upgraded version of the precinct count optical scan machines used in the 2010 and 2013 elections.
The Comelec will need about 300,000 teachers to comprise the BEI that will administer the voting and counting at clustered precincts.