KIDAPAWAN CITY – Close to 9,000 registered voters who failed to vote in two successive elections up to 2007 were taken off from the list of voters of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in North Cotabato.

Rey Tubelonia, North Cotabato provincial election supervisor, said that at least 8,994 voters were “delisted” as Comelec continued to cleanse its records in preparation for the 2010 national elections.

Last July 20, members of the Election Registration Board (ERB) in each municipality in the province of North Cotabato met and started purging their list of voters and submitted afterwards the new list to the provincial headquarters of the Comelec in this city.

“The consolidation of data was done last August 21,” said Tubelonia.

In 2007, the registered voters in North Cotabato totaled to 556,679 but after the purging, it went down to 547,686.

Tubelonia, however, said those who were removed from the voters’ list have until October 31 this year to register again so they could vote in next year’s presidential elections.

Records showed that since the Comelec started registration of voters last December, only a few have registered in North Cotabato.

“Despite our appeal for the people to register, only few came in. It even went down after we did the delisting,” said Tubelonia.

North Cotabato, a landlocked province in Central Mindanao with 1.1 million populations in 2007, has 17 municipalities and one component city, and 543 villages.