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Voter registration starts Dec. 1 for overseas Filipinos
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Posted on Nov 03 2008
The Philippine Consulate General on Saipan is informing Filipinos in the CNMI that the overseas absentee voters registration will start on Dec. 1.
There are about 9,000 qualified Filipino overseas absentee voters in the CNMI, according to Consul General Wilfredo Deleon Maximo.
Maximo said he expects a big increase in the voter turnout in the 2010 national elections after a dismal turnout in the 2007 senatorial polls.
He recalled that about 75 percent of registered voters here went to the polls when the first absentee voting system in the history of Philippine elections was held in the April 14, 2004, presidential elections.
That has dipped to not even a third in the senatorial elections 2007.
Maximo said Filipino voters are mostly interested in the national and presidential elections.
It would be the third time that Filipinos will participate in elections while they are away from home during the 2010 national elections.
Meanwhile, the consulate is upbeat about the newly-implemented program on Machine-Readable Passports.
The MRP is a travel document containing data that can be read both by the naked eye and by a machine/passport reader, which replaces hand-scripted passports.
MRPs contain the passport holder’s information including a photograph with required biographical data printed in a standard format.
“People are getting used to it. They like the MRP,” said Maximo.
He said it would take six weeks for the MRP to be processed because the applications are made in Manila. The process would take that long because of the time of sending it to Manila and getting it back.
Maximo said all applications for passport renewal should be filed well before expiration of the old passports.
Renewal applications may be filed anytime when the passport to be replaced has only six to one and a half months’ remaining validity.
Maxino said the green Philippine passport, however, is still valid until the date of its expiry.
