CEBU CITY – Voter’s registration for this year’s Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections ended on Tuesday, Jan. 31, with the Commission on Elections recording close to 200,000 new voters in Central Visayas.
The Comelec-7 said it recorded 175,980 new registrants since the registration started last Dec. 12.
Megumi Tapia of the Comelec-Cebu City said the turnout was slightly lower than the figures that they expected.
The bulk of the new voters came from vote-rich Cebu province with 111,912, including the independent cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapu-Lapu. There were 31,600 new voters in Bohol, 29,826 in Negros Oriental, and 2,643 in Siquijor.
Tapia noted that thousands trooped to their registration site during the last day of registration.
“Around 2 p.m. (on Tuesday), there were more than 1,600 applicants who arrived in our registration site to beat the deadline,” said Tapia, officer-in-charge at the registration site in Robinsons Galleria Cebu.
Tapia said that a day before the deadline, they catered to about 1,500 registrants. “In the early part of the registration, only a handful showed up to register. Our room here was almost empty,” said Tapia.
This year’s barangay elections will be held on Oct. 30.