Link to pre-enrolment for overseas voting out, but…

It was an agony getting to this page for many overseas Filipinos who tried to pre-enrol to vote

Three days after it was supposed to have been made public, the link to the pre-enrolment for overseas voting was finally released by the Commission of Elections on Mar 23, but this was immediately met with widespread criticism.

The complaints ranged from the link not going to any page or was broken, to messages of the person being blocked because of a security trigger, the clicked page expiring too quickly, and so on.

Some who tried to pre-enrol got this alarming notice

The problems appear to have been so widespread that by Monday, Mar 24, only about 5,000 Filipinos overseas had managed to pre-enrol, according to Comelec chairman George Erwin Garcia himself.

This is a tiny fraction of the 1,241,690 Filipinos registered to vote abroad.

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But Garcia did not seem overly concerned, telling reporters that he expects the number to increase in the coming days. He also expressed hopes that the pre-enrolment figure will rise to nearly the same level as the registration figure.

..or this quirky reply, but still no pre-enrolment page

Bayan Muna Hong Kong is not as optimistic, saying Comelec’s “flawed system” is bound to lead to widespread disenfranchisement.

“Not only was Comelec late in providing the pre-enrolment link and information drive, there are no advisories on what to do if such problems are encountered. We need an accessible and reliable system,” said Bayan Muna spokesperson Lai Besana in a Facebook post.

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She said that because of the difficulties encountered by many of those trying to enroll, some voters are not calling for the return to in-person voting. But this, said Besana, is a problem in itself because it would mean a return to the long queues and hours of waiting to vote, especially on Sundays.

Besana said her post was a call for Comelec to urgently address the issues faced by voters frustrated with their inability to take the first step towards casting their vote for the upcoming national elections in the Philippines.

Pre-enrolment is a test run for the actual online voting which will be held from Apr 13 to May 12.

PCG provided the link, and says that those who cannot access the page may go to them for help

Pre-enrolment is set from Mar 20 to Apr 7, and the actual enrolment to vote will be from Apr 13 to May 5, or a week before online voting ends. All registered voters will have to enroll to gain access to the voting portal where they will be asked to fill a ballot and cast it online afterwards.

As it is a mid-term election, overseas voters can only vote for 12 senators and one party-list group on any day during the election period.

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