BAGUIO CITY — The Cordillera office of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) here disclosed that the six provinces and one city in the region have 300,000 new voters, exceeding the earlier predicted 200,000 additional voters in the region.

However, lawyer Julius Torres, Comelec-CAR regional director, said the number is expected to increase or decrease depending on the outcome of the ongoing validations being done by the poll body on those who availed of the registration of new voters.

Torres said the poll body expects to come out with the final list of voters for the May, 2010 elections in Abra, Apayao, Benguet, Ifugao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, and Baguio City by the end of this month.

During the May 14, 2007 local elections, Cordillera had 789,837 registered voters that participated in the political exercise.

Torres said the additional voters is composed of new voters, those who have activated their names, and those who transferred their place where they intend to cast their votes during next year’s first-ever political exercise.

Torres admitted there is still a long way to go to educate the old and new voters relative to the implementation of the automated elections, thus, they are trying their best to complete and clean the voter’s list before working on the massive information and education campaign on how to use the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

The regional Comelec office is still awaiting the arrival of the designated PCOS machine from its central office so that they could already go around the different provinces, city, and municipalities to educate the people on how the machine works.

Torres assured once posted in conspicuous places in the vicinity of the Comelec offices, the voters list have already been properly cleaned and clustered since one precinct can now accommodate 1,000 voters instead of the original 200 voters for the previous manual elections.