A thousand registrants queued at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on the first day of the two-month registration period starting Thursday.
“We did not expect this flow of people on the first day of registration. But yet, we are happy that more people listened to our call, which is not to wait until the last day of registration,” Comelec election officer in the city Krisna Caballero told TIMES on Thursday.
Apparently surprised by the high influx of new voters, Caballero said there were at least 1,000 registrants coming in, some arrived earlier than the office hours. They even stopped issuing queuing numbers at 3 p.m. to meet and finish the registration at the scheduled cut off time at 5 p.m.
There were also some people who opted to return to their homes after not being catered because of their lack of needed documents.
Caballero said they no longer accept cedula and police clearance as proof of identity.
Also, the live birth certificate is only valid for SK elections. The only valid IDs are those government issued such as the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), Philippine Statistics Authority certificates, and employee’s ID.
“They do not have proper documents, and we cannot cater (if) they bring incomplete documents. We advised them to please come back tomorrow or by the time that they already secured the requirements,” she added.
The Comelec will continue the registration until Sept. 30. “It’s a very short number of days, considering that it is only two months, our office is open starting 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday,” she said, adding that even on Kadayawan Holidays, their office will always be open as scheduled.
Caballero said they are still expecting more registrants at the last minute since it is usually the trend every registration.
