The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday said it has registered almost 63 million local voters for the May 9, 2022 elections.

“Right now, we are close to 63 million registered voters for 2022. Our actual projections were 59 million but right now we are almost at 63 million projected registered voters for 2022,” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a virtual town hall discussion.

The poll body official also reported that the number of new voters has exceeded four million.

“Roughly 4.5 million new registrants in the books. This is incredible considering that there is a pandemic,” he added.

Likewise, Jimenez said they expect more people to register during the extended registration period.

“As for the extension, we originally said we were expecting to get around 300,000 to 350,000 new registrants. But now, we already have around 400,000 new registrants,” he added.

The original September 30 voter registration deadline was extended to October 30 in response to calls from lawmakers and various sectors to enable more people to participate in the polls.

Meanwhile, he also said the number of overseas voters is now at 1.6 million after the registration period ended on October 14.

“So all in all if you are going to have 63 million registered voters locally and 1.6 million overseas voters, then you are looking at a voting population of almost 65 million voters and that’s a huge percentage of our population,” he added. (PNA)