Comelec eyes malls as voting centers for 2025 polls

Malls – among other “public places” – are being eyed as voting centers for next year’s midterm elections, to avoid overcrowding at polling precincts and provide convenience to voters, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia said yesterday.

At a press briefing, Garcia said he had directed local election officers to prepare alternative voting centers like malls for the midterm elections instead of classrooms at elementary schools which get overcrowded and unbearably hot during elections.

“Our instruction to our local Comelec offices is – as much as possible, if we can help it, avoid using elementary schools because there are other public spaces anyway. Let’s use those public spaces,” Garcia said.

“Why not use them (other public spaces) instead of bearing the discomfort of overcrowding at elementary schools, and messing up school children’s things and teachers’ plants,” he said. He maintained that public schools should be used only in the absence of other ideal voting centers.

Local Comelec offices, he said, are looking for malls that can offer spaces for polling centers for free. The country’s 171 malls are being used by the poll body as registration centers.

Garcia emphasized however that they would undertake public consultation first with affected voters before designating new areas as voting centers.

He said only if a majority of voters opt for new voting precincts would the Comelec allow voting at different polling places. “There will be no forced transfer of venue for casting votes,” he said. Those in far-flung areas, in particular, would not be required to go to malls just to cast their votes, Garcia pointed out.

Meanwhile, Garcia said Comelec is seeking additional budget for tapping public schools that would be used as voting centers in the May 2025 elections.

Garcia said the Comelec had already included in its proposed 2025 budget an allocation for electricity bills and other charges for utilities for public schools to be used as voting centers.

He said Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte earlier requested the Comelec to help public schools shoulder additional expenses during elections.

For the longest time, Garcia said the Comelec had been using public schools as voting centers for free.