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.
