The Commission on Elections recently announced that it has succeeded in meeting its goals for the pilot-testing their mechanisms for the ‘Register Anywhere’ project as it ended its two-month voter registration period from 12 December last year to 31 January, which gained 1.48 million new registrants.
“It’s just a matter of expanding the training as well as the number of RAP staff, strengthening Comelec information technology infrastructure, further hardening of cybersecurity, identification of strategic areas for RAP sites sufficient to establish nationwide coverage, and more collaborations and partnerships with malls throughout the country,” said Comelec spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco.
He added that there will be assessments on the needed voter registration improvements as well as a ‘baseline study’ for their proposed ‘mall voting’ which they aim to pilot-test on the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections on October.
While the figure did not reach the 1.5 million-target for new voters, Laudiangco clarified that there are more than 1.6 million additional voters in the country’s voting population, including those who filed for reactivation, inclusion and reinstatement of voting status.