Extended registration yields a quarter million new voters

The five-day extended registration last month yielded over 250,000 new voters — way below the four million qualified registrants supposed to have been disenfranchised when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) moved the deadline to October, the poll body said on Wednesday. Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal told a press briefing that a total of 258,691 people had registered during the extended listing last month. Larrazabal, however, said the figure was not yet final, since two more towns in Sulu — Pata and Kalingalan Caluang — had yet to submit data to the poll body's main office in Manila. The Comelec reopened its registration centers for five days last December following a Supreme Court decision ordering the poll body to extend the official list, which originally ran from December 2008 to Oct. 31, 2009. [See: Voters can still register until January 9, 2010 - high court] The high court allowed the extension pursuant to Section 8 of Republic Act 8189 of the Voters Registration Act of 1996, which says that registration must end 120 days before elections. Meanwhile, Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez reiterated that the extended registration had yielded “very low" turnouts nationwide. [See: Comelec: Low turnout on last day of extended voters’ listup] "[The] voters’ registration ended last October, and we have already reached our threshold of about 49 million voters by that time. This is why the extended registration had a very, very low turnout," Jimenez said in Filipino at the same press briefing. But Kabataan party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino, who questioned the shortened period for registration before the high court for supposedly disenfranchising four million first-time voters, maintained that the number of additional registrants only proved that the extension was the right move. "The Comelec should recant its statement that there was low turnout. The more than 250,000 who registered in five days during the Christmas season is a success in itself. We were vindicated," Palatino said in a text message to GMANews.TV. The poll body earlier said that as of December 10, the number of registered voters had reached 49,271,492. In the 2007 elections, there were 45,029,443 registered voters. — RSJ/NPA, GMANews.TV