SHARIFF AGUAK, Maguindanao – Disenfranchisement of voters have been reported in Maguindanao but officials said the Barangay and SK elections were generally peaceful.
As of noontime, hundreds of registered voters in various towns in Maguindanao today failed to cast their votes after they were disenfranchised.
A registered voter at Guindolongan Central Elementary School in Guindolongan, Maguindanao has complained that he could not find his name on the voters’ list. “It was here that I voted last national election,” he said. “Now, my name is gone,” he said.
Many others also complained their names were no longer in the list now posted in the same precincts that they last voted.
Lawyer Udtog Tago, Maguindanao election supervisor, said they may be part of the registrants whose names were detected by the Comelec’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to be multiple registrants.
The poll body delisted at least 3,000 voters in Maguindanao’s 36 municipalities two days before election.
Many of the delisted names were registrants of Datu Abdullah Sangki town with about 2,000 voters. The remaining delisted voters were from other towns.
Tago also said that those whose names were missing could be due to their failure to vote in the last two succeeding elections.
He could not say how many exactly are currently disenfranchised in the province. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
