The Bureau of Jail and Management and Penology (BJMP) said that inmates can now decide the fate of local candidates in the next local election citing that the 20,000 detainees who registered for the May 10 national elections and the newly registered inmate voters is enough to make a difference in the next elections.

Director Rosendo Dial, BJMP chief, cited the turnaround on how powerful detainees’ votes have become in the making or unmaking of local leaders and their political adversaries.

Inmates were first allowed to exercise their right of suffrage during the recent national elections in May where more than 20,000 were able to register and a 17,000 voted.

Dial said that the number of inmate voters and the addition of the newly registered prisoner voters are enough to alter the result of the elections considering the thin gap between political candidates’ number of votes.

The BJMP said that more than 46,000 inmates under its wings are qualified to vote as 2,665 detainees in the country had already registered from August 4 to 13.

However, Regions 3, 4-B, 7, 8, 9, the National Capital Region (NCR) and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) have yet to submit their data to the BJMP on the number of voters in their respective areas.

“We are still requesting the Comelec En Banc for registration extension because some jails have not been visited by election assistants as they were busy catering to local registrants,” Dial said.