The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to  come up with a special voting procedure and special polling precinct for detainees in the May 2010 elections.

CHR chairperson Leila de Lima said they made the request in order for detainees to exercise their right of suffrage.

‘All these years, nakakalimutan natin ang mga detainees. No special procedures are provided or mechanism for them to really exercise their right of suffrage except for mga VIPs like former president Joseph Estrada and former ARMM chairman Nur Misuari,” she said in an interview.

De Lima said while they’re happy that the Comelec already came out with a resolution on the registration of detainees, the same resolution only provided off-site escorted voting.

“Walang on-site, meaning kailangan munang mag-obtain individually itong mga nag court order bago sila payagan makalabas….. and kailangan ng escort and that would entail security risk and to us operational nightmare yan,” she said.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, said the poll body is still in the process of deliberating the CHR’s request.

“At this stage we are still deliberating on that. But the sense is that it might be a little bit hard to manage. Polling precincts are assigned geographically depende yan sa teritoryo. Besides yung mga preso naman they don’t come from just one place. They come from all sorts of different places. So it will be very difficult for us to pull out their names from their origins and just put it in one place para lang ma-service sila sa loob ng kulungan,” he said.

“As of now the policy is if they want to vote they have to get a court order so they can leave detention and then go where they are supposed to vote under escort from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology,” added Jimenez.