THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) said that taking biometrics of registrants was the reason why the voters’ registration went on a little longer.

“Probably what contributed to the slowdown in the registration is the fact that biometrics were taken. The process was a little prolonged. Not like before… just the application, then the approval. Now, your fingerprints have to be taken, your signature, picture, that is why it’s longer,” said Comelec Chairman Jose Melo.

For updates from around the country, follow Sun.Star on Twitter

But he said the country will benefit from the automated system.

Meanwhile, Melo blamed voters for their habit of registering at the last minute.

“Our continuing registration started December 2 last year. That is every day. There were quite a number of days when nobody registered. Then people flock at last three to five days,” he said.

The Comelec has yet to release the total number of registrants as they are still gathering data from their field offices.

The poll body meanwhile extended its office hours on Tuesday (November 3), from 8 a.m. to 12 midnight.

Melo said the extension of office hours is needed to accommodate the people who were not able to finish their registration last October 31, 2009, the last day of registration.

The Comelec repeatedly denied the calls to extend the registration noting that their timeline will be much affected if they will give in to the request of the public.

Melo said they need to be firm on their schedule since they need to come up with the list of voters in February 2010.

In a related development, the Comelec has junked the proposed separate storage for rejected ballots of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines being pushed by the project management office (PMO).

Ramon Casiple, member of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Advisory Council, said they elevated the case to the Comelec en banc who in turn sided to them.

“Aside from concurring expenses that are outside the budget already, what would stop some people who might take advantage once the storage boxes are opened from mixing the genuine ballots from the rejected ones. We do not agree to that,” Casiple told reporters.

“The en banc, ultimately, agreed with us na paliitin na lang yung ballot boxes and will only store the genuine ballots while yung mga ballots na twice ire-reject will just be confiscated by the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs),” he added.

Casiple said they all agreed to shrink to a size of beer case the ballot boxes that will be used in next year’s election to make it easier to store.

In its proposal, the PMO said the PCOS machines are set to accept both rejected and genuine ballots and will have separate storage compartments although the latter is the only ones that will be read by the machine.

“Most probably, the rejected ballots will now be just placed in a separate envelope by the BEIs,” Casiple said. (FP/MSN/Sunnex)