ZAMBOANGA CITY – For their failure to vote for two consecutive elections, some 51,618 voters in this city were recently removed from the official list of voters.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) District 2 officer Jesus Posadas said that at least 50,654 names were removed from the voters’ list in his area while Comelec District 1 officer Al-Kadam A. Sakandal reported that 964 names were delisted from his area of jurisdiction – or a total of 51,618 voters.

Pasadas and Sakandal said Comelec rules and regulations stipulate that electors who failed to exercise their right of suffrage for two consecutive elections for whatever reasons are automatically removed from the list of qualified voters.

The two city election registrars said that, as required by law, they had forwarded the names of the delisted voters to the respective village chairmen who, in turn, are mandated to inform the delisted electors of the offense meted to them by the Comelec.

The deletion of names of erring voters, Posadas and Sakandal said, is aimed at cleansing the list of voters in preparation for the national elections in May 2010.

After the removal of the names of the delisted voters in the first district, which covers 37 villages, the area’s total number of electors has been reduced from 196,000 to 169,323, Posadas said.

In the Comelec’s second district which covers 61 villages, Sakandal said, the number of voters went down to 157,943 from 191,000 after the cleansing process.

According to the two local election officers, delisted voters could still qualify to exercise their right of suffrage in the coming presidential and local elections if they report to the city Comelec offices to have their names reactiviated before the end of December.