Comelec observes ‘very unusual’ hike in Makati voters for midterm elections
The number of registered voters in Makati City has ballooned by nearly 57,000 even after it lost 10 vote-rich barangays to Taguig City, a statistical anomaly described by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday as “very unusual.”
Speaking through Sen. Imee Marcos who defended the poll body’s proposed spending plan of P35.5 billion for 2025, Comelec Chair George Garcia told the Senate plenary budget deliberations that a sudden spike in the number of new voters was also reported in other areas such as Nueva Ecija, Tawi-Tawi and Cagayan de Oro City.
According to Marcos, the Comelec already formed a task force and sought the help of the Department of the Interior and Local Government to look into the matter ahead of the May 2025 local and national elections.
In the case of Makati, she said a total of 18,555 new registrants were recorded in its two legislative districts.
More than 38,000 voters also registered as transferees from other cities in Metro Manila, Marcos added.
In her interpellation, Sen. Nancy Binay asked the Comelec about its assessment and observations on the significant hike.
Binay, who is on her second and last six-year term as senator, is seeking to continue her family’s political hold on Makati by running for mayor against her brother-in-law, Makati Rep. Luis Campos, the husband of her sister Abby Binay, the incumbent mayor.
55 percent more
Citing the Comelec’s own data, she said Makati now has almost 314,000 voters, a surge of almost 22 percent from the more than 258,000 registered voters in the 2023 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
The senator noted that the registered voters in Campos’ district rose to 63,409, or 55 percent more than the voters in last year’s local balloting.
“The Comelec agrees that it was very unusual that after 10 barangays were removed from Makati, it gained almost 57,000 voters,” Marcos said in response to Binay’s question.
In 2021, the Supreme Court issued a ruling, which turned over jurisdiction over the so-called 10 “Embo” villages, including the military reservation in Fort Bonifacio where the upscale Bonifacio Global City is located, from Makati to Taguig.
According to Marcos, the Comelec discovered that almost all of the new voters in Makati had presented a barangay certification issued by village chairs as proof of residence.
To address this, she said the poll body had proposed the passage of a law to prohibit the use of a barangay certification in applying for registration as a new voter.
