With the development of a vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) seen to take at least a year, Commission on Elections (Comelec) spokesperson James Jimenez has proposed voting by mail in 2022 to minimize the risk of voters catching the virus.
In his May 14 column for the Business Mirror, Jimenez said absentee voting is another alternative that could be explored for the next elections.
He said there’s a need to minimize the number of voters in polling places since social distancing and proper hygiene will be inadequate to lessen people’s risk of infection.
“A better solution, therefore, would be to combine health precautions with measures designed to bring down even further the number of people going to polling places to cast their ballots. In other words, we need alternatives to in-person voting,” Jimenez said.
The Comelec spokesperson said voting by mail and absentee voting are already being done, though the public doesn’t know much about them. Absentee voting is currently allowed for members of the media and government employees with work on election day, while voting by mail is an option for Filipino migrant workers overseas.
Jimenez, however, said Congress would need to act fast to pass the necessary laws if voting by mail and absentee voting were to become options in the 2022 elections.
“With Covid-19 spooking everyone, however, there is every reason to believe that if these alternatives were to be made available to the general voting population, we would see more people taking advantage of them,” he said.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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