Comelec to ask for more funds if BSKE gets postponed
Commission on Elections. Inquirer file photo.
MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will ask for more funds for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) if these will be postponed to cover the expenses for the new voter registrants, according to Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia on Monday.
Garcia said that the P11-billion budget for the BSKE is still intact and will automatically be carried over for next year if the elections are postponed from December 1, 2025 to the first Monday of November 2026. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier said that he will sign the bill seeking to extend the current three-year term of BSK officials to four years.
“If there is a reset, we will ask for an additional budget because there are new 2.8 voter registrants,” Garcia, speaking in Filipino, told reporters in an interview.
READ: Comelec tallies 2.13M new voters at end of latest listup
Garcia explained that the resetting of the elections is not included in their budget proposal for 2026 as there was no law postponing the elections before. He added that the new 2.8 million voter registrants are not included in the funds they requested.
“We need an additional budget for more ballots, precincts, teaching staff, and election paraphernalia,” Garcia added.
Garcia shared that the 10-day voters’ registration period, which ran from August 1 to August 10, garnered around 2.8 million registrations, of which 65-67% are from the youth sector. This exceeded the poll body’s target of 1.5 million new applications.
As the poll body will resume voters’ registration in October 2025 until July 2026 if the elections will be reset, Garcia sees a total of 4 million new registrations.
“If new voter registrants increase, we may ask for an additional budget of P4 billion,” Gracia noted.
Procurement process
Despite the looming postponement of the BSKE, Garcia said that the Comelec pushed through with the procurement process of materials to be used in the elections.
He explained that the process must continue since there is still no law on its postponement and the poll body may fall short in preparations if there is delay in procurement.
READ: Comelec to continue BSKE preparations despite term extension bill
He said that the poll body may have started procuring materials already, but no delivery has been made yet. He noted that the procurement process takes about two months in the government.
“We did not technically spend anything in the procurement process,” he said.
Garcia earlier said that the poll body started procuring ballot boxes for the BSKE since the elections will be done manually. /mr
