MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is eyeing to build makeshift polling precincts if it determines that the schools affected by the powerful earthquake in Mindanao are no longer structurally safe, its chairperson George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday.
Garcia said that the Comelec is currently verifying how many schools were affected by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck parts of Mindanao on Monday with its epicenter located off the coast of Sarangani. He noted that this is done for their preparations for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections and Bangsamoro parliamentary elections.
READ: LIVE UPDATES: Mindanao earthquake
“Like what we do in situations like this, the Comelec may build makeshift [polling precincts] in areas of affected schools so our fellow citizens can vote there,” Garcia told reporters in an interview.
Garcia noted that the makeshift polling places will not be built far from the schools to avoid disenfranchisement of voters. He also said that the voting centers may be held in other schools.
“For the Comelec’s part, we don’t have intention to transfer voting places, especially if this will result in them voting in far places,” he added.
According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) on Wednesday, the death toll from the earthquake rose to 45, with 487 reported injured, and 17 others missing. Of the fatality figure, the NDRRMC said that 33 deaths came from Soccsksargen (South Cotabato, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, and General Santos city) and 12 from Davao region.
The agency also said that 33,596 families or 149,372 individuals have been affected by the earthquake while nearly 3,000 houses were damaged.
BARMM polls preps
Garcia also reiterated that the first Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) parliamentary elections will push through on Sept. 14, 2026 as the poll body is currently preparing for the conduct of the elections.
READ: Comelec ‘fully prepared’ for BARMM elections
He shared that the Comelec en banc already approved the list of candidates and nominees of political parties who will run in the elections. He noted that this is important as it already authorizes the poll body’s Information and Technology Department to encode their names in the database for the finalization of ballot faces.
He also said that the printing of over 2.3 million ballots may be held in the third or last week of June. He added that the poll body already finished the hardware acceptance test for the automated counting machines to be used in the elections. /das
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