TACLOBAN CITY — The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) in this city is considering the clustering of precincts with the approval of the automated polls for the 2010 elections.

Susan Collamar, Tacloban City Election Officer told reporters in an interview that her office is now considering the fusion or clustering of some precincts in this city following the approval of the poll automation in the 2010 national and local elections.

Collamar said with the automation of polls in the forthcoming elections, her office shall cluster small and neighboring precincts in the city to facilitate and speed up even more the electoral process.

She said it took over a month to manually count and canvass all the votes cast for presidential and vice presidential bets in the 2004 polls and two months, before all the votes given to senatorial candidates in 2007 could be counted and canvassed under the original manual process.

The Comelec 7 official also said that if there are now more voters in a precinct, that should not be a problem because, now that the polls will be automated, the time needed for votes to be cast will be faster than if the polls are still manual.

Meanwhile, Comelec7 said the number of registered voters in Tacloban City has declined. This after the poll body here deleted registered voters who have failed to vote in the last two elections.

Collamar, Tacloban City Election Officer told reporters in an interview at her office here that a total of 13,133 registered voters in this city has been deleted from the voter’s list for either failing to cast their votes in the past two elections, have opted to transfer to other voting areas, or have passed away.

She however clarified that those deleted names are still intact and archived in her office and those who are interested can still apply for reactivation until October 31, 2009 which is the deadline for registration for 2010 elections.

Collamar said that the 102,071 registered voters in Tacloban City in 2007, has gone down to 93,133 currently with the cancellation of names of those no longer qualified to vote.

She however expressed confidence that the number of voters will still increase considering that many still have signified their intention to register before the Oct. 31 registration deadline mandated by the Comelec.