Comelec to trim down polling precincts by 70%

MANILA, Philippines — In line with its poll automation program, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday said it intends to reduce the number of polling precincts for the May 2010 elections to 30 percent. Election Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the aim is to cluster the 250,000 precincts used in the 2007 polls and bring these down to only 80,000 precincts. The clustering of the precincts is basically part of the automation project, he told reporters. The Comelec earlier this month awarded the P11.3-billion contract for the controversy-tainted poll automation project to the consortium of Smartmatic and Total Information Management (TIM). Smartmatic will supply the 82,500 voting machines for next year’s first automated elections on a nationwide scale. With 82,500 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines available, and with one machine covering about 1,000 voters, Sarmiento said it would be more than enough to cover the entire 80,000 precincts nationwide. Sarmiento said the Comelec’s Election Barangay Affairs Department (EBAD) has already started clustering five precincts into one precinct. “One precinct has about 200 to 250 registered voters," he said. The Comelec estimated the number of registered voters in the country at 42 million, after the EBAD removed nearly 6 million names during a clean-up of the list. Registration for new voters, however, is continuing, and this includes Filipinos abroad. As of Thursday, the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat of the Department of Foreign Affairs reported that 104,000 new overseas absentee voters have signed up since registration opened on Feb. 1. In the Philippines, Sarmiento said more than one million new voters have registered. - GMANews.TV