148 inmates vote in Bataan

BALANGA CITY , Philippines  – Some 148 out of 901 inmates voted yesterday in the country’s first automated elections with the assistance of 14 special board of canvassers who conducted the voting inside the highly secured Bataan Provincial Jail.

Police Superintendent Ernesto Flores, officer-in-charge warden of the BPJ, the inmates who cast their votes are registered voters of Balanga City who met the minimum standard set by the Commission on Elections on the 140 inmates. The special board of canvassers brought the ballots inside the jail where the inmates chose their candidates from the President down to the city councilors and collected the filled-in ballots in secrecy folders to polling places they are duly- registered. The board of canvassers fed the official ballots to precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine of the inmates’ respective cluster precinct.

Flores said the safety aspect of allowing inmates from Orani and Mariveles town to vote in their respective precincts have been discarded due to lack of personnel and other measures which the Comelec cited as “impractical.”

Flores said the distance of the two towns from the BPJ, personnel and mobile problems have been considered in evaluating the right of inmates to participate in the electoral process.