By DELIA BAGNI
www.nordis.net

BAGUO CITY – The Commission on Elections -Cordillera Administrative Region (COMELEC-CAR) disclosed in a press conference, December 19, 2012 that registered voters for the 2013 May elections decreased.

According to Attorney Julius Torres, Acting Regional Election Director of Comelec-CAR, a large number of voters were removed from the voters list for the 20123 elections. He said, though a lot of new registrants have been entered, many of the old list of voters were cleaned-out or delisted because of double registration, inactive voters among others. Almost 20,000 voters were removed or deactivated from the list.

Torres admitted that they had difficulty identifying double registrants because they are not online and the only way to discover double registrations is through their fingerprints and through the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System(AFIS). He added that removal of deactivated voters in the list was done manually.

He added that COMELEC is still under the process of detecting double registrations and deceased voters. Torres stated that all who are found to have double registrations are automatically removed as a regular voter.

COMELEC is also closely monitoring Abra which reported incidents of vote buying and existense of private arm groups. Political parties are allowed to have security personnel and escorts assigned by the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Cordillera Police Regional Director Benjamin Magalong added that they are also monitoring Abra for private armed groups and crime cases. Magalong said that in last year’s monitor armed groups listed 87 to 36 in January 2012. he added that private armed groups have decreased by 50 %. #www.nordis.net