House approves its version of Absentee Voting Bill

The House of Representatives on Wednesday evening approved its own version of the Absentee Voting Bill, placing the long-awaited measure just two steps away from becoming law.

Unlike a similar bill passed by the Senate last week, the House version limits the officials to be elected by absentee voters to only the president and vice-president.

The Senate version includes the election of 12 members of the senate and party-list representatives in the lower chamber apart from the two top national posts.

"We have decided not to include the election of senators in the absentee balloting measure because this would make the conduct of the election extremely difficult," Rep. Eladio Jala, one of the principal authors, said.

However, a bicameral committee composed by select members of the House of Representatives and Senate will be coming out with a final consolidated bill which, once approved, will be signed by President Gloria Arroyo into law.

House Speaker Jose de Venecia, one of the principal authors of the measure, said he expects the bill to be enacted by Congress this month as he revealed that Arroyo has vowed to sign it into law within 24 hours after it is submitted for her approval.

"I filed this bill when I was speaker of the 10th Congress. Now we have delivered what our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), who have been contributing at least $8 billion annually to the economy, have been asking," de Venecia noted.

Once signed into law, the measure will allow more than half of the estimated seven million Filipinos abroad, mostly migrant workers, to vote during elections at home.

Under the House version of the absentee voting measure, the Commission of Elections (Comelec) was practically given blanket authority to ensure the orderly and honest conduct of polls abroad.

The registration of absentee voters can be made in diplomatic and consular offices not later than 280 days before the date of the election.

Authors of the measure expressed confidence that the House version of the bill has enough provisions to safeguard the election process against fraud.

Rep. Teodoro Locsin said most of the salient amendments made the House version overcome the flaws in the Senate version.

The House version provides for "face-to-face" registration of qualified absentee voters either in the Philippines or at the consular office where they will vote, while the senate proposal allows registration through mail.

It also states that the absentee voter will be entitled to cast his ballot within nine days but not later than one day before the actual date of election in the country.

As with the senate version, the house proposal specifies that the counting and canvassing of votes shall be conducted within the premises of the embassies and consulates designated as voting sites.

The counting and canvassing shall be automated, with the Commission on Elections authorised to rent or acquire automated voting machines for the exercise.

Another salient feature of the House version is the inclusion of a "sunset provision" which, Locsin said, provides the "fail-safe" provision in the proposed law. The bill waiting to be passed is only for the 2004 national elections, after which it "automatically dies and goes back to Congress for review and re-enactment".