The Pilot Indigenous Peoples (IP) Voting was Successfully Conducted In Oriental and Occidental Mindoro

The Pilot Indigenous Peoples (IP) Voting was successfully conducted in Oriental and Occidental Mindoro during 9 May 2016 National and Local Elections. Voting took place in all the twenty three (23) pilot voting centers in the Mindoro Provinces.

For Oriental Mindoro, there were fourteen (14) voting centers with Separate Polling Places (SPP), and two (2) with Accessible Voting Centers (AVC). For Occidental Mindoro, there were four (4) voting centers with SPP, and three (3) with AVC. SPP are polling places in established voting centers that catered solely to qualified IP voters while AVC are newly established voting centers that are situated nearer to the IP communities. The joint security force of PNP and AFP in the concerned municipalities secured the transport of ballots from the established voting centers to the AVC. In order to observe the implementation of the Pilot IP Voting process, observers from National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and Legal Network for Truthful Elections were deployed in the different SPP and AVC on election day. Notable were the participation of Mangyan election monitors who observed the IP Voting process in their communities. With a total of two thousand eight hundred seventy eight (2,878) IP voter beneficiary, partial voter turn out from sixteen (16) out of the twenty three (23) voting centers totals to two thousand five hundred eighty seven (2,587) or at a rate of around 90%.

The Pilot IP Voting Process was launched by the Commission on Election (COMELEC) in order to address problems on access, discrimination and "hakot" of IP voters on election day. On March 14, 2016, the COMELEC promulgated Resolution No. 10080 which outlined the General Instructions on the process of Pilot IP Voting in selected voting centers in the Mindoro Provinces.###