Overseas Absentee Voting to start on April 9—Comelec

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MANILA—With less than a week to go before the start of the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV), the web application of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), created to assist registered voters abroad find the places where they must cast their votes, is still under maintenance.

At present, the Post Finder feature at the Comelec website is being repaired.

The said feature is an application for overseas voters and seafarers in finding the Philippine posts abroad, where they are assigned to cast votes. To be able to see their Posts on the screen, Filipinos abroad are required to enter the necessary personal details.

“If their registration as an overseas voter has been approved by the RERB (Resident Election Registration Board), their record shall be displayed after entering their details that are required,” the poll body said.

With this, the commission said the voters may send an e-mail to info@comelec.gov.ph for their concerns.

Last week, the official Comelec website was defaced by hackers group Anonymous Philippines which affected some web applications in the website such as the Precinct Finder, Video Demonstrations, and the Search Function.

Several hours after the unauthorized access, some of the functionalities of the website had been restored by the Comelec–Information Technology Department (ITD) and the Comelec Web Development Team. They also continue working to make the website accessible.

There are a total of 1,376,067 registered overseas absentee voters—1,326,728 representing land-based and 49,339 sea-based.

Three systems will be used in the OAV—the automated election system (AES), personal manual voting system, or the manual casting of votes in the designated polling precincts, and the postal manual voting system, wherein the ballots will be mailed directly to the registered voter, who will then mail it back to the polling center after accomplishing it.

A total of 85 Philippine posts overseas will be using the AES while 26 posts are participating through the personal manual voting system and another 26 posts overseas will adopt the postal manual voting system.

Three Philippine posts will not be conducting any elections due to prevailing uncertainty in the host countries.

The voting for the OAV will begin on Saturday, April 9 (8 a.m., host country time), to Monday, May 9 (7 p.m., Philippine time).