Registered voters in Iloilo City are expected to reach around 330,000 come May 2022 elections once the Election Registration Board (ERB) of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) here is done with its deliberations of all applicants.

In an interview on Wednesday, Elections Assistant Jonathan Sayno said the ERB has already deliberated on applications of 19,638 registrants for the Sept. 6 to 30 registration.

The ERB is composed of the local civil registrar, schools division superintendent, and the elections officer. “All applications were approved,” he said.

From Nov. 11 to 16, the ERB will again deliberate on the applications of 12,822 registrants during the extended registration period.

The results of the two ERB hearings will be added to the running total of 304,450 as of July 2021, he said.

“We still have an ongoing cleansing process to remove the names of deceased voters based on the list from the Local Civil Registrar of Iloilo City,” he added.

They are expected to come up with the list first week of December.

Sayno said they have to fast-track because their central office needs the data on the number of registered voters as the basis for the printing of ballots and functional clustered precincts for the allocation of vote-counting machines (VCMs).

By January next year, a list of voters for posting in voting centers will already be available.

He added that voters are advised to already grab the opportunity to look for their precinct and sequence number so on the day of the elections they will just proceed to their identified voting precinct and no longer have to queue and look for their names on the list.

It is also their chance to check if their names are on the voters’ list so they need not go to the voting center during election time.

“We are mandated to post the list of voters months prior the Election Day but it seemed like this is not given importance by our voters. They will just realize its importance during the day of the election,” he said.

In the last 2019 midterm elections, the city’s total registered voters were 294,766. (PNA)