GENERAL SANTOS CITY -- Some 1,077,376 residents in this city and South Cotabao province are eligible to cast their votes in the May 14 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections.
Lawyer Jay Gerada, Commission on Elections (Comelec)-South Cotabato supervisor, said Thursday the figure comprised the validated regular voters and those participating in the SK polls.
Only regular registered voters or those aged 18 years-old and above can vote in the barangay elections.
For the SK level, voters aged 15 to 30 years old can vote and only those between 18 to 24 years-old can run for a post.
A report released by the Comelec provincial office showed that the number of regular voters in the area has reached a total of 790,081.
Comelec-South Cotabato has operational jurisdiction over this city and the province’s 10 towns and lone city.
The top three vote-rich localities are this city with 274,619, Koronadal City with 101,082 and Polomolok town with 91,994.
Those qualified for the SK polls but not considered regular voters reached a total of 287,295, with this city topping the list with 97,548.
In the 2016 local and national elections, the province voting population was listed at 724,325, making it the third vote-rich province in Mindanao.
Gerada said the number of registered voters in the area initially decreased after the 2016 polls due to the cleansing of the voter’s list.
He said the rollout of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System or biometric identification facilitated the purging of deceased voters, multiple registrants and those who have not voted in the three previous polls.
But the figures increased following the “last push” for voter’s registration in November last year, he said.
For the May 14 polls, Gerada said election offices in the province have completed their preparations.
He said they have already posted the list of voters in at least three “conspicuous places” as required by the Omnibus Election Code while the forms for the scheduled filing of the certificates of candidacy on April 14 to 20 are already available.(PNA)
