Philippines to host mid-term polls tomorrow

Manila: A total of 18,072 national and locals positions are at stake in the 13 May mid-term polls.

Based on Commission on Elections (Comelec) data, of the aforementioned number, voters will be electing 12 senators and 61 seats for party-list organisations.

For local polls, registered voters in the country will be selecting 245 members of the House of Representatives, 81 governors and vice governors and 780 members of Provincial Board.

Filipinos will also be voting for 145 city mayors and vice mayors; 1,628 city councillors; and 1,489 municipal mayors and vice mayors; and 11,916 municipal councillors.

Comelec figures also showed that the country now has a total of 61,843,771 registered voters while there are a total of 1,822,173 voters overseas.

The country’s top three regions with the highest number of registered voters are Region IV-A (Calabarzon) with 8,674,351; National Capital Region (NCR) with 7,074,603; and Region III (Central Luzon), 6,829,611.

Of the country’s 17 regions, CAR (Cordillera Administrative Region) registered the lowest number of voters at 1,013,418.

As for overseas voting, the Middle East and Africa regions have the highest number of Filipino voters with 887,744; followed by Asia Pacific with 401,390; North and Latin America, 345,415; and Europe, 187,624.

Filipinos abroad started voting a month ahead of their compatriots in the Philippines.

Just like in the May 2016 polls, the May 2019 elections will be automated as voters in the country will be using vote counting machines (VCMs).

The Comelec is utilising a total of 85,768 VCMs in the same number of clustered precincts nationwide. There a some 7,000 VCMs as contingency.

As part of the automated polls, the poll body is pilot-testing the Voter Registration Verification Machine (VRVM) in some areas for this year’s polls.

The pilot areas are: Manila, Quezon City, Cavite, Pangasinan, Cebu, Negros Occidental, Davao del Sur and Zamboanga del Sur.

The 2019 polls is the fourth time that the country will be holding an automated polls nationwide. The first one was in the 2010 presidential polls, the 2013 midterm elections was the second and the last was during the 2016 presidential polls.