Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo said Monday that the report in the five million padded voters in the voters’ list for the May 10 elections does not exist as ‘’they could have been plucked out of thin air.’’

Melo told Senate reporters after a hearing by the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Election System at the Senate building that he is questioning the basis for the five million voters’ figure of retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz or the 3.2- million voters figure of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) as ‘’padded’’ voters in the automated elections.

He said that a Comelec en banc resolution in October last year gave guidelines to the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) not to allow voters to cast their votes if they are known to have been registered in other precincts, because it is only the courts that can delete questionable registrations.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said the poll body is investigating the report on the alleged padded voters’ list.

Howard Calleja of the PPCRV said the report on the 3.2-million ‘’padded’’ voters is based on the 40,000 questionable, double registrations in Davao City and Davao del Sur when multiplied that of 80 provinces.

Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said the Cruz figure has a deep impact on the coming elections because the possibility of “flying voters” or dead persons voting in the electoral process is there.

He pointed out that the new biometric system is used only recently, which covered the new 50 percent of the estimated 50-million registered voters, while the remaining 50 percent were listed in the old manual system of registration.