Unity in diversity

BABE'S EYE VIEW

- AMBASSADOR B. ROMUALDEZ

Close to 69 million Filipinos have registered for the 2025 midterm elections that will take place tomorrow, May 12. This number is a lot higher than the 65.74 million registered voters for the presidential elections in 2022 that saw more than 55 million trooping to the polling precincts to cast their votes, for a record-breaking voter turnout of 84 percent—and expectations are high that the percentage of voter turnout will be higher for this year's elections.

Early last week, the Commission on Elections extended the pre-voting enrollment period for overseas absentee voters (OAVs) from May 7 to May 10 to enable more overseas Filipinos to cast their votes. Pre-voting enrollment is required before OAVs can cast their ballots via the Online Voting and Counting System (OVCS).

According to the Comelec, only 134,474 OAVs have enrolled in the OVCS, which is a low 11 percent of the total 1.2 million registered overseas voters. This is rather unfortunate because online voting is meant to make the process less cumbersome for overseas Filipinos. We are hopeful, however, that the OVCS will encourage more OFWs to exercise their right to choose their leaders by participating in the elections.

At stake are 12 seats in the Senate, 317 seats in the House of Representatives that include 63 coming from party-list groups and 17,942 local positions from governor, vice governor, mayor, vice mayor to provincial board members and councilors from 82 provinces.