In the
Philippines, the right of suffrage ‘may be exercised by all citizens of the
Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law who are at least 18 years of age
and who 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’ (Philippine Constitution, 1987, article V: Suffrage,
section 1, para. 1). Case law, meanwhile, has established that a person’s ‘intent
to return’ and not his actual physical presence needs to be established to satisfy
the residency requirement of the constitution.
The
enactment of the Overseas Absentee Voting Law (Republic Act (RA) no. 9189) on
17 February 2003 gave life and meaning to article V, section 2, of the
constitution, which mandated the Congress to provide a ‘system for absentee
voting by qualified Filipinos abroad’. Its primary aim is to ensure equal
opportunity for all eligible citizens of the Philippines who are living or
staying abroad to exercise their fundamental right to vote. This provision of
the constitution specifically recognized the role played in nationbuilding by
Filipino overseas workers, both land-based and sea-based, who have to leave the
country mainly for economic reason in order to offer a better life for their
families back home. The same law also provided that Filipino citizens who are
immigrants or permanent residents of other countries may exercise their right
of suffrage on condition that they sign an affidavit of intent to return within
three years from the approval of their application as overseas absentee voters
(OAVs). The affidavit should also contain a declaration that they are not
applying for citizenship in the host country.
The
immigrant or permanent resident who voted in the 2004 national elections should
return to the Philippines
within three years after his application was approved. Should he or she fail to
return to the Philippines
within that period and vote again in the next national elections, they will be
perpetually barred from voting in absentia and may be imprisoned for one year.
A flurry of
activity followed that saw a partnership between the Commission on Elections
(COMELEC) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). A Committee on Overseas
Absentee Voting (COAV) was created within COMELEC, while an Overseas Absentee
Voting Secretariat (DFA-OAVS) was formed at the DFA. In essence, COMELEC is to
supervise the whole overseas voting process, while the embassies, consulates
and other diplomatic missions run it. COMELEC formulated the implementation
rules and regulations on registration, voting, counting and the tabulation of
the count (‘canvassing’ is the term for tabulation that is used in the
Philippines law), while the different posts abroad saw to it that these were
implemented in the 2004 national elections, and will do so in future elections.
Training modules for the members of the Foreign Service Corps were prepared and
eventually handled by COMELEC.
On 17
September 2003, the Citizenship and Re-acquisition Act (RA no. 9225) was
passed. It granted natural-born citizens of the Philippines the right to regain and
retain their Philippine citizenship provided they swear the Oath of Allegiance
and without requiring that they give up their naturalized citizenship. This law
also provided full restoration of their civil and political rights, such as
(but not limited to) the exercise of their right of suffrage provided they also
sign the affidavit of intent to return. As the next national elections were to
be held in May 2004, the one-year residency requirement was deemed not to have
been met by those who availed themselves of RA 9225. Hence, even if naturalized
citizens were able to re-acquire or retain their Philippine citizenship, and even
if the names of those approved for registration were included in the National
Registry of Overseas Absentee Voters, COMELEC did not allow them to vote.
Based on
government records and figures of the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), the usual estimate of the number of Filipinos abroad is about 7 million.
More than 1 million live in the USA
and Canada.
Electoral
registration
For the
first time in Philippine history, Filipinos abroad were able to vote for the
president, the vice-president, members of the Senate and the party list members
of the House of Representatives in the 2004 national elections. The electoral
registration period was short—from 1 August to 30 September 2003. A standard
application form was provided by COMELEC.
There were
two kinds of registration. Applicants had to apply for registration if they
were not registered as electors anywhere in the Philippines,
while those already registered as voters in the Philippines could apply for
certification as OAVs.
As required
by the OAV law, registrants went in person to the different posts abroad armed
with their Philippine passport and other documents proving their identity.
Their biometric data were captured live: their photographs, thumbprints and
signatures were taken digitally. From these data, COMELEC produced the National
Registry of Overseas Absentee Voters, the Certified List of Overseas Absentee
Voters for each diplomatic post, and the applicant’s identity document.
Field
registration was also conducted outside the diplomatic missions, as not all
Filipinos abroad are concentrated in the areas where missions are situated. In
the Philippines,
registration was conducted at the offices of the election officers in the
different municipalities and cities all over the archipelago. Seafarers also
filed their applications at COMELEC. Registration of Filipinos in countries
where there are no Philippine diplomatic missions had to be done personally at
the embassy or consulate which had consular jurisdiction over the place where
they reside.
After
initial verification by the diplomatic posts, all application forms were sent
to the COAV in Manila and turned over to the
local election registration boards (ERBs) in the different cities and
municipalities all over the Philippines
for the addresses given by the applicants to be verified. The applications for
registration/certification were either approved by the ERBs on the basis that
the applicants were indeed resident at the place claimed before leaving for
abroad, or refused. Thereafter, the processed forms were returned to the COAV
in Manila where
the COMELEC central office is located. These approved forms became the basis of
the Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters.
Unfortunately,
this cumbersome and tedious procedure proved to be a major bottleneck in the
implementation of the OAV law, and eventually the DFA-OAVS and the COAV produced
different statistics for the actual number of registered Filipino overseas
electors.
The DFA,
through the Philippine posts abroad, generated 364,187 registrants, of whom
361,884 were classified as regular OAVs. This figure is at least one-third of
the estimated number of registrants submitted by the DFA prior to the start of
the registration period. Of the applications received, 2,020 came from persons
with dual citizenship, while 567 requested transfer from external voting back
to the Philippines.
Of these latter, 520 applications were granted and 47 were refused. Hence the
final figure of 359,297 in the Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters. Of the
359,297 who registered, only 2,302 were seamen.
The ERBs
rejected 397 applications on the grounds that the applicant was not a resident of
the city or municipality, or that the person had used an assumed name, or that
he or she was unknown in the city or municipality. Due to time constraints,
these applicants were not notified of the rejection of their application in
time for them to file petitions for inclusion in the Certified List of Overseas
Absentee Voters.
Reports
from the missions confirmed that, compared to the first week of the
registration period (1–10 August 2004), the number of those registering during
the last week (21–30 September 2004) jumped by 643 per cent, showing the
tendency of the Filipinos to act at the last minute.
By
geographical area, the Asia–Pacific and Middle East
regions accounted for 86 per cent of the total numbers of registrants, with
almost equal number of registrants for each. Europe accounted for 10 per cent,
and the Americas
a modest 4 per cent. A profile of the registrants would show that most are
Filipino overseas workers employed as domestic help in the Asia–Pacific region
or as skilled workers in the Middle East.
The
Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters was posted on the websites of both COMELEC
and the DFA-OAVS some time in February 2004, and corresponding hard and soft
copies were sent to the diplomatic posts.
The
voting
External
voting was held in 81 Philippine embassies and consulates, three Manila economic
and cultural offices (MECOs) in Taiwan,
three satellite voting centres, and 18 field voting precincts. For diplomatic
posts with registered seafarers, the voting was held over a 60-day period,
starting on 12 March 2004, while those which had only landbased voters started
voting on 11 April 2004. The deadline for voting was 10 May 2004 at 15.00,
Philippine time, as required by the OAV law (which was also the close of the one-day
voting in the Philippines).
The OAV law
provides for the overseas absentee voter to vote in two ways. The first is personal
voting: the registered elector has to present him-or herself before the
Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEI) at the diplomatic post where he or
she is registered as an elector in order to vote. In 2004 voters trooped to the
posts to cast their votes in person by writing the names of their chosen
candidates in the spaces provided on the ballot papers prepared and sent by
COMELEC. For each day of the voting period, the posts allotted one cardboard
ballot box which had to be sealed at the end of the day regardless of whether
it contained a ballot paper. (This meant 60 ballot boxes at missions where
there were registered seafarers and 30 ballot boxes at missions were there were
only land-based registrants.) The other method is postal voting: the
registered voter will receive an envelope containing the ballot paper which he
has to fill in and send by mail to the post where he/she is registered as an
elector. This method was adopted in Canada,
Japan and the United Kingdom
where the postal systems are efficient and reliable.
Only 4 per
cent of overseas registrants were covered by postal voting. On the other hand,
personal voting was conducted in 70 countries, covering 245,627 OAVs.
The counting
and tabulation of votes
Of the
359,297 registered and approved overseas absentee voters, 233,092 (65 per cent)
voted in the May 2004 national and local elections. This is a considerable
turnout under the circumstances and similar to the national turnout in previous
national elections.
The
Philippine Embassy in Havana in Cuba was the first mission to finish counting
and tabulating the votes, while it took the Consulate General in Hong Kong almost 100 hours, or four days, to finish
counting as each SBEI or election precinct counted more than 800 ballot papers.
Counting was done manually, with the contents of the ballot papers being read
aloud and individually tallied. Each precinct would then tabulate the result in
the election returns provided by COMELEC. Tabulating and summing up the
election returns on a per-country basis took longest—six days—in the Embassy in
Riyadh, where
the election returns coming from Consulate General in Jeddah and the Philippine
Overseas Labor Office in al-Khobar had to be accounted for.
Geographically,
the Asia–Pacific and Middle East countries posted
the highest turnout by OAVs. In the Middle East,
turnout would have been much higher had it not been for the security problems
which plagued the region during the voting period. Most OAVs voted during the
weekend in Asia–Pacific, Europe and the Americas,
while in the Middle East countries most voters
came on Thursdays and Fridays, which are considered weekends by most Muslims.
In
countries where postal voting was adopted, turnout was only 48 per cent.
Factors that affected the turnout were mail being returned to the sender
because the addresses provided by the voters were insufficient, addresses as
encoded at the COAV being misspelled and therefore incorrect, and a postal
strike in the UK. In some instances, mail intended for a particular diplomatic post
was misrouted to the COAV.
The
respective chairpersons of the Board of Canvassers for each country flew in to
the Philippines
in time for the overseas votes to be included in the national tally.
Problems
most frequently encountered
The
implementation of the OAV law was a success in many ways but, as so often when new
arrangements are implemented for the first time, the conduct of the voting and
the implementation of the OAV law were not without problems.
1. The
tasks allocated to the members of the Foreign Service Corps by the OAV law are over
and above their consular duties and required special training. Registration
itself took place too soon and the period of registration was too brief to
enable the missions to prepare fully for the new task. Hence, the time they
spent on the whole electoral process meant less time for their given functions
at the posts.
2. The ERBs
were not given sufficient time to be informed about the overseas absentee voting
process. This led to their decisions on applications being submitted late or in
some instances not submitted at all. This may explain the reason why the COAV
reported a lower number of registrants compared with the figure submitted by
the DFA-OAVS.
3.
Misspelling and incorrect inputting or wrong data in the voters’ records and
IDs were attributed to the complicated application form for registration as an
OAV. Most registrants complained about the numerous items to be filled in. As a
result, complaints ranged from the issuing of defective IDs to names not appearing
in the Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters, although the COAV did not
have any record that the applications concerned had been rejected.
4. The
affidavit of intent to return, also called the ‘killer clause’, discouraged immigrants,
permanent residents abroad and persons with dual citizenship from registering
as OAVs. They cannot be sure when they will return to the Philippines, so
it is difficult to say that they will return within three years of the approval
of their application. Moreover, they would not risk being penalized by
imprisonment if they failed to return to the Philippines as mandated by the law
and voted again in the next national elections as OAVs.
Under the
OAV Law, COMELEC would have to set up a monitoring mechanism to enforce this
provision of the law. To date, however, it has yet to finalize the procedural rules
to implement this provision of RA no. 9189 as the rules and regulations of 2003
dealt primarily with the requirements and procedures for registration, voting,
vote counting and tabulation.
5. The
voting period was too long. Some posts which opened as early as 12 March2004
did not have a single voter until the first day of voting for the land-based
OAVs, as not all who had registered decided to vote. Even the 30-day voting period
was perceived to be long.
6. Voter
education was a particular concern for the diplomatic posts. Most OAVs, including
members of the Foreign Service Corps, have been away for several years already.
They had problems identifying the candidates and some were not known to them.
This resulted in people voting by ‘name recall’, or voting for those whose
names were familiar as few candidates campaigned at the different posts due to
cost constraints.
The party
list elections were another source of confusion. Most voters asked if
theyshould vote for a particular category of candidate (i.e. migrants or
labourers) or for theparty list.
7. The low
turnout at some posts was attributable to the fact that field registration was
not translated into actual field voting. Hence, those registered in the field
were not able to vote by reason of distance and cost.
8. The
voting, counting and tabulation procedures and the corresponding forms were
mostly adopted for overseas absentee voting from the local electoral process. The
electoral management bodies found most of them tedious, repetitive and
impractical.
9. As most
voters were excited about having the chance to exercise their right of
suffrage, the ballot papers were usually filled in to the last item. To this
was added the problem of electors understanding (‘appreciation’ is the word
used in the election code) of the ballot papers—for example, correctly
interpreting similar-sounding names—and of election officials interpreting them
and deciding which were spoiled or invalid. Although the SBEIs were trained and
taught how to ‘appreciate’ the ballot papers, they were still apprehensive when
the counting of ballot papers came. Hence, counting took time, especially as
each SBEI for counting was assigned at least 500 ballot papers, if not more.
The cost
of external voting
COMELEC was
allotted 600 million pesos (PHP—c. 11 million US dollars (USD)) for the
implementation of the OAV law while the DFA was given a budget of 200 million
PHP (c. 3.7 million USD) for the year 2003 and during the 2004 national
elections. For the forthcoming registration, both government agencies would be
operating on the excess funds from the previous year.
The
estimated average cost per registrant was 847.89 PHP (15.42 USD) while the
estimated average cost per voter was 1,306.96 PHP (23.77 USD). The difference
is understandable as only 65 per cent of the registrants actually voted.
Overseas voting is most expensive in Havana, Cuba, while the MECO in Kaohsiung,
Taiwan, had the lowest estimated cost per registrant (11.29 USD) and the
embassy in Muscat, Oman, had the lowest estimated cost per voter (14.92 USD).
Recommendations
for the improvement of the law
Given the
problems and issues which confronted COMELEC in the implementation of the first
OAV law, recommendations for its improvement have already been submitted to the
Senate and the House of Representatives.
Amendments
to the OAV law should be attuned to the proposed revisions of the
constitutional requirement on residency and the modernized election laws of the
land.
If the
constitutional requirement of residency could be relaxed or even abolished
because of the mere fact that OAVs are living and working abroad, the
provisions on the affidavit of intent to return and the approval of the local ERB
would not be necessary. If the residency requirement for OAVs could be relaxed,
the election laws should also then be able to recognize the peculiarities and
intricacies involved in overseas voting so that it would not be tied to the
local scenario of the electoral process.
To date,
COMELEC has submitted various amendments to the 1985 Omnibus Election Code for
the consideration of the legislature. Suggestions from stakeholders already
include automating registration and electronic voting, but the present election
laws do not allow this. A more realistic alternative is expanded postal voting.
The reason for the low turnout of seafarers, who easily comprise more than
200,000 overseas workers, was the requirement that they had to register and
vote in person. Understandably as well, not all overseas Filipinos live near an
embassy or consulate. As long as the law requires paper ballot papers and a
‘paper trail’ to avoid suspicions of cheating during elections, external voting
in the Philippines
will continue to entail personal registration and voting.
Registration
in 2005
At the time
of writing, as amendments to the law were not yet in place, COMELEC is set to
usher in a new, continuing registration for OAVs, beginning on 1 October 2005 and
lasting until 31 August 2006, that is, for a period of 11 months. This is in
response to the demand that the registration period should be longer than the
mere two months of the last time.
To address
the situation of having to send application forms to the local ERBs, COMELEC
was to establish a Resident Election Registration Board (RERB) which would
process and act upon all applications for registration at the central office of
COMELEC in Manila.
Recognizing
the nature of seafarers’ work, COMELEC would now allow them to register at any
Philippine embassy or consulate abroad. COMELEC would thereafter explore the
possibility of expanding the coverage of postal voting to include other countries
where there is a limited concentration of Filipinos.
The
approved applications for registration/certification were to be considered as applications
to vote in absentia, so that registered OAVs do not need to apply anew. COMELEC
assumes that for so long as the voter does not apply for transfer of his registration
records from his original post of registration to another place, whether in the
Philippines
or in another country, he is still residing at the same place.
Given that
only a modest proportion of the people entitled to do so actually registered as
OAVs during the 2003 registration, the natural reaction would be either to
scrap or to suspend the implementation of the law. Some observers have
attributed the low rate of registration to the perceived apathy of overseas
Filipinos who cut all political ties with the country long ago. However, no one
can deny the economic contribution they make to the country by way of
remittances sent to their families in the Philippines. The task now is to
convert this apathy into intelligent and informed votes. To deny the right of suffrage
once so fiercely fought for does not seem to be the right response. Hence, if
the Filipinos overseas can be made fully aware of their rights and of the
potential impact of a consolidated
overseas vote in the country’s socio-political setting, perhaps their contribution
to the political life of the country will be even greater than their economic contribution
to nation-building.
