Biometric voter registration in Philippines reaches 52 million

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the Philippines has announced that the number of registered voters for the country’s May elections has reached more than 52 million.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez this total is the highest ever recorded to participate in the country’s elections. According to a report in ABSCBNnews.com, the first automated polls in the Philippines in 2010 saw nearly 51 million voters register.

“It is not a net gain of one million, rather about five million because the (almost) 51 million in 2010 went down to 47 million after delisting,” Jimenez said. “Now it went up again [to 52 million].”

Reported in BiometricUpdate.com, in 2012, Philippine Congress approved a bill requiring all voters in the Philippines to undergo biometric registrations for the country’s 2016 elections. This will entail voters submitting their photograph, fingerprints and signatures for verification.

According to Jimenez, even this year after deduplication, roughly five million duplicate records were removed from the system, though he thinks the excess records indicates a high interest from the public in automated polls.

“Aside from the fact that the number of Filipinos ages 18 years old and above is rising, obviously there’s also a high interest in the automated elections.”

Also reported in BiometricUpdate.com, the Election Commission in Nepal has been working on a biometric voters’ registry database and has so far accumulated 10.9 million eligible voters.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  elections  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint  |  identification  |  verification  |  voter registration