With the election just right around the corner, it will be more convenient to know your precinct number ahead of time. This is why a lot of Filipinos tried to check their precinct numbers through the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) precinct finder website. Unfortunately, it has experienced a major glitch.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez explained that their IT experts are already looking on its website issues. Jimenez clarified that one of the possible issues a user may encounter is having a default response of “deactivated”. This happens when a blank field was left in the query form.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology has received the reports of the experts and decided to temporarily suspend the link which teh public has been using. Instead, the public can use the link
https://www.gov.ph/web/precinctfinder.
Voters simply have to input their full name, province and municipality or city. The voter database it uses is from the voter registration period in September 2018.
Voters whose records have been deactivated will not be able to vote. They need to get registered after the May 2019 elections for their records to be reactivated.
On teh other hand, those who want to check their precinct and polling center can also send an email to [email protected] and [email protected]. You can also call (02) 526-7769.
If you are living near a Comelec office or schools to be used as voting precincts, you can visit them and manually check if your name is on the list. You can also send a direct message to Comelec’s Twitter account @radyocomelec.
It could be recalled that Comelec website was breached by hackers in 2016, The personal information of around 55 million voters was posted online. During that time, the precinct finder was disabled as well.
