Absentee voting issues

Will the proposed Absentee Voting Bill run counter to the Constitution if the Senate version is adopted? The Senate bill impliedly allows voting rights to immigrants like green card holders who have not yet become citizens of the country where they immigrated, while the House bill expressly disqualifies them.

The constitutional provision supposedly affected is Section 1 Article V which says that the voters "shall have resided in the Philippines for at least one year and in the place wherein they propose to vote, for at least six months immediately preceding the election" Because of the Supreme Court definition of residence as having a clear intention to return to the country of origin (animus revertendi), it could happen that a Filipino residing abroad may claim legal residence both here and abroad to justify casting his ballot in the embassy or consulate nearest his residence abroad assu-ming he opts not to mail his ballot to the Comelec in Manila. Mr. Federico Pascual thus proposed the adoption of the House version which defines "qualified overseas Filipino" as "a Filipino citizen abroad not an immigrant of the country where he resides, who is a holder of a valid Philippine passport". But does the Senate version really run counter to the Constitutional provision cited by Pascual? My two cents' worth of opinion is: it does not.

The key to the right of suffrage is citizenship. Section 1, Article V itself says that suffrage may be exercised by "all citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law" Citizens are members of a nation or body politic of the sovereign state or political society who owes allegiance to it. (Black’s Law Dictionary). Citizenship bestows to them the sovereign right of suffrage whether they are physically present or absent in the country of their citizenship.

Filipinos abroad whether immigrants or not, therefore, have the right of suffrage if they are still citizens. As long as they have not renounced that citizenship, the presumption is that they still consider the Philippines as their true, fixed and permanent home to which they have the intention to return whenever they are absent. This is the most essential element of the right of suffrage. Of course, they must be at least 18 years old and have not been declared by competent authority as insane or incompetent or adjudged by final judgment of having committed any crime involving disloyalty to the government, or against national security or with a penalty of imprisonment for not less than one year. In case of the latter class of convicts, they reacquire the right upon expiration of five years after service of sentence.

Being entitled to the right of suffrage is however different from being able to exercise it. Registration as a voter is a condition precedent to the exercise of the right. As of now, our election law covers only citizens who are at least 18 years of age on the day of the election, residents of the Philippines for at least one year and in the place where they propose to vote for at least six months preceding the election and not otherwise disqualified by law (BP 881 Sec.118 as amended). Practically speaking, the law enables only the citizens physically present in the country to exercise the right, since registration requires personal appearance aside from the act of voting itself. Citizens abroad or absentee citizens, while having the right, can exercise it only if they are already registered voters and they come back to vote every election time. Hence the Constitution itself, in the same Article V Section 2, mandates Congress to provide "a system for absentee voting by qualified Filipinos abroad". This is precisely the reason for the enactment of the absentee voting law which will enable those Filipinos to exercise that right of suffrage available to citizens dwelling in the country.

The issue of dual citizenship covered by yet another bill in Congress is an entirely different matter. I doubt very much however if this class of Filipinos na namamangka sa dalawang ilog could still retain that sovereign power if they have divided loyalties to different sovereignties.

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