The Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) regional Early Voting Task Force (TF) on Thursday urged members of the vulnerable sectors to avail of early voting from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. for their convenience.
“We want everyone to know that Comelec knows, Comelec understands and Comelec feels the vulnerable voters that is why after seeing its benefit in 2023, the commission decided to make it a national system from just a pilot city during the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Election,” said lawyer Elenita Tabangin-Capuyan, head of the regional Early Voting TF, in a press conference on Thursday.
She said that under the scheme, all polling precincts will accommodate senior citizens, pregnant women and persons with disabilities, including their companions or assistor.
“The 5 to 7 a.m. voting time in all precincts was allotted for them. We hope they will avail of it to avoid queueing with the regular voters, escape the heat in the voting precincts and the summer outdoor heat,” Tabangin-Capuyan added.
A PWD or senior citizen who has difficulty accomplishing the official ballot can bring an assistor—a person who is within the fourth degree of consanguinity, living in the same household as the person being assisted and willing to sign a confidentiality document— can also avail of the early voting if they are in the same voting precinct.
Lawyer Julius Torres, Comelec-CAR director, said in the same press conference that the system is a relatively new process that gives priority to the vulnerable sector for their ease in casting their votes.
He said they can feed the ballot and read the results from the screen of the automatic counting machine, just like any other voters.
Priority polling precincts
Meanwhile, priority voting will be conducted from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the municipalities of Atok, Tuba and Kibungan in Benguet and a still unidentified town in Apayao.
Under this scheme, voters or their assistors in priority polling precincts (PPP) will shade their ballots, but the electoral board will feed the same into the ACM.
Lawyer Vanessa Roncal, assistant regional director of Comelec-CAR and concurrent provincial director of Comelec-Benguet, said the three municipalities in the province were identified based on the number of those in the sector.
“We know that senior citizens have difficulty reading and they probably want to think deeply in choosing their candidates so they can utilize the PPP without worrying that they are delaying the whole proceedings,” she said.
The only setback is that they do not get the chance to feed their ballots into the machine and they will entrust the task to the electoral board, Roncal added.
Lawyer John Paul Martin, election officer of Baguio, said when the PPP was still called Emergency Accessible Polling Place, there were only a few voters who availed in this city.
He said “they want to be the ones to feed the ballot showing their chosen candidates.” (PNA)
