Three more hours to vote this May 2010

Yes, voting time will be longer this year. The May 10, 2010 national and regional elections has been extended by Comelec. Voters will have 3 more hours to vote this time.

The Commission on Elections extended the voting hours by 3 to accommodate the large number of voters in the clustered precincts.

Voting precincts will open at 7 a.m. this election, and will stay open until 6 p.m., three hours longer from its previous 3 p.m. cut-off.

The poll body also said that should there be long queues on the voting precincts, they should extend even a little longer to accommodate those already in line.

The Comelec is expecting a large number of voters per precincts, because from the previous 340,000 plus precincts, they are now reduced to 80,000 precinct. Combining 3 to 5 precincts into one clustered precincts, depending on the size of the municipalities.

In the past, when voting and counting was done manually, each precinct would have 200 voters. This time, each clustered precincts would have 1,000 voters.

The poll body said, precincts are clustered to save on costs of leasing the ballot scanning and vote counting machines.

Let’s just hope that with the Comelec’s adjusting its voting hour, people would not follow suit and also adjust their time and still come at the last minute.