Filipino voters in 26 countries did not vote in the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) of this year’s midterm Elections.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) disclosed this during the canvassing, where no one of the 710 registered voters of the 26 countries covered by postal voting exercised their right to suffrage as Filipinos.
The countries are: Columbia, Netherlands, Suriname, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Estonia, Latvia, Burundi, Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Zambia, and Macedonia.
According to Comelec-Committee on OAC, these countries do not have Philippine embassy or consular offices and they are mostly far from the Philippines posts where they are supposed to send their postal ballots.
Aside from the geographical locations of these countries, the cost of mailing the ballot could also be the reason why the voters did not participate in the elections.
Also some of the voters did not update their registered address because their records were not updated.
The OAV is a month-long event where the voters can get to vote senatorial and party-list candidates.
Only 150,000 voters cast their votes from the 737,759 registered voters from some 227 Philippine posts around the world.
