Comelec backs hybrid elections
THE COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) will support efforts to amend a law that automated the national and local polls, election chief George Erwin M. Garcia said on Tuesday, citing the need to revise the measure to allow the conduct of hybrid elections.
“We will definitely support [it],” he said during Comelec’s congressional budget briefing. “If there is an initiative by Congress to have a hybrid election, we will definitely support it.”
“We will need an amendment because what is stated in [Republic Act No.] 9369 is pure automation, it doesn’t provide for the conduct of two systems, therefore we might encounter problems,” he added.
Comelec in July rejected a proposal to hold hybrid elections for the 2025 polls, citing that it would violate a 2007 law that mandated the conduct of automated election systems. The country first conducted its automated elections in 2010. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio