Philippine Consulate in SF begins overseas voting for 2022 election

Over 12,000 ballots mailed to eligible voters in 10 states under Consulate jurisdiction

ELIGIBLE Filipinos voters in the United States can now cast their votes in the 2022 Philippine national elections.

The month-long voting period began on April 10 and will end on May 9.

Registered Filipino voters abroad will be voting personally or via mail at their respective Philippine embassies and consulates. They will vote for their national candidates – president, vice president, senators, and party-list groups.

Over 1.6 million Filipinos are registered to vote overseas, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). The number has dropped since overseas absentee voting was first held in 2004 as hundreds of thousands of Filipinos returned to the Philippines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States has a total of 198,935 registered voters, making it the third country with the most registered voters after the United Arab Emirates (290,182) and Saudi Arabia (282,605). Hong Kong and Canada round up the top five countries.

On May 9, 65.7 million Filipinos will go to their local polling precincts in the Philippines.

The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco said it has mailed over 12,000 ballot packets to voters under its jurisdiction: Alaska, Northern California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Utah.

The Consulate General’s mode of voting is postal voting, which involves the Consulate sending to registered overseas voters election packets that contain the official ballots. The Consulate has been sending the election packets to registered overseas voters.

“I wish to encourage those who have received their ballots to fill out the same and send back to the Consulate as soon as possible using the ballot envelope with prepaid postage stamps. They may also drop off their ballots at the Consulate during office hours,” said Philippine Consul General in San Francisco Neil Frank R. Ferrer.

The completed ballots must be mailed back to the Consulate in San Francisco before the close of the overseas voting period, which will be May 9, 2022 at 4 a.m. (Pacific Time). Voters are also able to drop their ballot envelopes at the Consulate lobby until the deadline. Any ballots received afterward will be considered invalid and will not be counted.

The public is advised to check their names in the Certified List of Overseas Voters for the 2022 National Elections at https://pcgsanfrancisco.org/certified-list-of-overseas-voters-clov-2022/.