The Comelec has recently issued guidelines for the release, distribution, and re-printing of voter’s identification cards. Under these new rules, election officers are now required to post the names of the voters whose IDs are available for release.
A voter may either claim his ID personally at the local Comelec office, during regular office hours from Monday to Saturday, or have an authorized representative do it for him. The authorized representative, however, has to present a notarized authorization document, together with his own ID. The distribution of IDs may now also be done at the Barangay Hall, or in any public building in the Barangay, subject to proper coordination with the Barangay officials.
The new guidelines have also clarified that registered voters who have de-listed or de-activated cannot be issued ID cards. This means that the IDs of those who have been identified as multiple registrants – which is an election offense, by the way – or who have passed on will no longer be released. Instead, the IDs – which will be marked “Cancelled” – will be attached to the Voter Registration Records.
Those who have had their registrations de-activated, on the other hand, will not be able to claim their IDs until their registrations have been re-activated. De-activation of registration record is the consequence of having failed to vote in two regular elections. This is a common occurrence which most voters tend to overlook. Fortunately, re-activation is a fairly easy process where the voter simply has to fill up the appropriate form at the local Comelec office. The deadline for re-activation falls on October 31, 2012 – the same deadline for the registration of new voters, the filing of applications for transfer of registration, the filing of applications for changes of name and correction of entries, and validation.
And speaking of transferred registrations and corrected names and entries, Voter IDs that have been printed corresponding to the old records, i.e., pre-transfer and pre-correction, will not be issued. If the voter already has an ID, he will have to give it back or, if he can’t, present an affidavit of loss.
A registered voter may request for the reprinting of lost, torn, or defaced IDs by personally filling out an application for a Voter’s ID Card Replacement and attaching an affidavit of loss. As this will cost him one hundred pesos, he will be issued a corresponding official receipt.
And finally, in cases where the voter ID cannot be printed for any reason, the Election Officer is now obliged to notify the affected voter so that he can come back to the Comelec office to correct the problem. In most cases, this will involve going through the biometric capturing process again.