Saudi Arabia's 111,539 Filipinos eligible to vote have one month from this Saturday to cast their ballots for a president, vice president, 12 senators and a party list representative, four weeks ahead of election day in the Philippines itself. Voters have until May 10 to make their way to the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah, the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, or the International Philippine School in Al-Khobar, where embassy staff trained by the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) are urging nationals to vote early. “Transport facilities have been arranged for voters living a long way from voting venues,” said Ambassador Antonio P. Villamor. The number of eligible Filipino voters in the Kingdom - 52,869 in Riyadh, 21,587 in the Eastern Province, and 37,083 in Jeddah – was reached following a registration scheme in Riyadh, Al-Khobar and Jeddah in 2009 that increased the list by 15,960. Of an estimated eight million Filipinos living abroad, 589,830 are registered as overseas absentee voters, 568,733 of them land-based and 21,097 offshore workers, according to Comelec. The Middle East and Africa have the largest number with 225,148, followed by Asia Pacific with 215,546, North and South America with 66,745, and Europe with 61,294. Comelec failed, however, to reach its target of one million overseas Filipino voters. The elections in the Philippines will for the first time use automated voting, but the procedure will only be available to overseas voters in Hong Kong and Singapore. Votes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf will still be cast by hand while Filipinos in the US also have the option of mail. This year's elections have seen the emergence of a large number of party-list groups, with Comelec approving 144 party-list organizations to vie for the 57 party-list seats out of the House of Representatives' total of 287. Fifty million voters are expected to go to the polls on May 10 to select a successor to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is constitutionally mandated to step down on June 30. Around 17,000 other posts are also to be contested, from parliamentary positions down to town council seats.
