Automated absentee voting for 57,000 govt workers, cops, soldiers, media starts

Local Absentee Voting (LAV) for over 57,000 government employees, police officers, soldiers, and media personnel began on April 28 and will run until April 30.

This is the first time LAV is being conducted using automated counting machines (ACM), a change from the previous manual counting of paper ballots.

The approved LAV voters include 29,030 from the Armed Forces, 23,448 from the Philippine National Police, 4,206 government employees, and 1,005 media members.

Absentee voters can only vote for national positions such as president, vice president, senators, and party-list representatives, and not for local offices.

Venues for government employees are determined by their offices, while media personnel vote at Comelec offices where they applied, and the Comelec has posted LAV venues on Facebook.

Comelec headquarters in Intramuros, Camp Crame, and Camp Aguinaldo are among the polling venues for LAV participants.

The ACM-capable ballots will be secured in envelopes and boxes and fed into machines at the Comelec building on election day, May 12.