Poor Filipino voter turnout seen normal
Published on: Tuesday, May 21, 2019
By: Nikko Fabian
KOTA KINABALU: The poor turnout of voters of Philippine citizens in Malaysia during the recently-concluded national and local elections held last May 13 is a normal trend.
This is mainly because Filipino voters abroad prefer to play active role in presidential elections instead of midterm polls.
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In previous interviews, Comelec – Office for Overseas Voting Director Elaiza Sabile-David said in every midterm elections, the turnout of overseas voters go down as people are more interested to vote during the presidential elections.
For this reason, she said Comelec continuously conduct voter’s education campaigns to encourage Filipinos abroad to cast their votes.
“In each Philippine post, there are voters’ education activities being conducted, where we strongly encourage overseas Filipinos to vote,” David said.
She added there are also other posts that reach out to different Filipino communities abroad to host regular meetings for voter education.
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Data from the Comelec revealed that there are 1,822,173 registered overseas absentee voters (OAV) in the 2019 midterm polls with 794,286 classified as new registrations.
The overseas voters are normally given one solid month till the official scheduled polling day to cast their ballots.
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The poor turnout of voters in Malaysia did not come as a surprise to many Filipinos.
The Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, two days after the May 13 midterm national and local election, announced that only 2,529 out of the total 18,557 registered overseas voters freely exercised their right of suffrage at the compound of the embassy in Kuala Lumpur last week.
In the previous 2016 elections, the embassy also recorded only 3,000 of its citizens who cast their votes out of the 18,700 voting population.
The statistics shows that the turnout of voters this year dropped to 13.62pc.
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Daily Express Malaysia
The common denominator in the two elections (2016 and 2019) was Filipinos in Malaysia overwhelmingly supported the presidential candidacy of Rodrigo Roa Duterte and the endorsement for the senatorial candidates in the midterm polls.