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Source: abs-cbnnews.com
-- A Commission on Elections (Comelec) official said on Wednesday that the poll body probably met its target of 4 million new voters for the national and local elections in 2010.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento told ANC's News@8 that "considering the upsurge" of applicants last week, "we might have reached the target of 4 million. There is that possibility."

Sarmiento said the actual number of new registrants will be known after the Election Registration Board (ERB) hearing on November 16.

He said the Comelec has to carefully run through the list of registrants first before making public its final list of voters by December.

The poll commissioner said one of the major problems that would have to be solved by the ERB is the weeding out of double and multiple registrants.

There were reports that several names with the same addresses came up in different registration centers.

Some groups of voters also tried to register twice in certain areas. Sarmiento said this was prevented with the help of citizen watchdog groups, including Boto Mo Ipatrol Mo of ABS-CBN.

Sarmiento said they have already come up with several formulas to rid the voters' list of multiple registrants, which will be tackled during the ERB hearing.

Over the weekend, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said at least 3 million new voters have already registered this year. He said this is one million higher than in the previous elections.

The Comelec on Tuesday issued a resolution extending the processing of applications of those who registered last October 31. From the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. timeline, the poll body extended the processing up to midnight on Tuesday.

Beginning November 20, the Comelec said it will suspend weekend days-off for the filing of the certificates of candidacy (COCs). The filing of COCs will end midnight of December 1.

November 16, meanwhile, is the last day of submission of specimen signatures for those authorized to sign nominations.

20 poll machines

Sarmiento said that after finalizing the list of voters, the Comelec will start educating election officers and voters around the country.

He said 20 poll machines were delivered by Smartmatic-TIM during the first week of October. He added that the 20 machines will be delivered to different regions for voters' education.

Sarmiento said the Comelec expects Smartmatic-TIM to deliver a total of 82, 200 voting machines before the May 10, 2010 elections.

The machines will be distributed to 80,136 polling precincts, and the remaining machines will serve as back-ups in case of trouble.