PPCRV set to start voters’ education drive

MANILA, Philippines - With less than two years left before the next elections, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is set to start its voters’ education program soon.

The poll watchdog said yesterday it will initially focus on encouraging voters to register for the May 2016 polls.

PPCRV national chairperson Henrietta de Villa bared that they will conduct a house-to-house campaign for this purpose.

De Villa, former ambassador to the Vatican, cited the need to encourage the more than nine million voters with no biometrics data or the automated photograph, fingerprint and signature needed to identify voters and enable them to cast their votes.  

“The concentration of the 9.6 million registered voters without biometrics is in the National Capital Region (NCR) and neighboring regions. That’s why the information about the registration should be heightened,” De Villa said in an interview over church-run Radio Veritas.

“We are planning to ask for a copy of the list of registered voters per legislative district, so we can give it to our coordinators for them to make a house-to-house campaign if that’s possible,” she said.

De Villa said they would also tap parishes to help in the campaign.

“They can announce it or they can place a laptop in the parish to help update their parishioners on the status of their registration,” De Villa said.

Earlier, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) expressed dissatisfaction over the number of voters who have so far registered for the May 2016 polls.

According to Chairman Sixto Brillantes, they were only able to register 500,000 voters nationwide for the first two months of the registration.