MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections targets to have at least one million overseas absentee voters for the 2010 national elections as registration for new absentee voters starts on December 1.“The goal is to have one million (absentee voters),” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a phone interview on Wednesday. There are already half a million registered absentee voters since registration closed in 2006 for the 2007 midterm elections. For this round of registration, the poll body hopes to generate half a million new applicants. In a resolution posted on Wednesday, the Comelec announced the period of registration for overseas absentee voting from December 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009. Applicants will have to personally appear at the embassies or posts in the countries where they are staying to register as new voters. Aside from new voters, the poll body is also encouraging registered voters who have changed addresses or need to update any information in their registrations to also go to their embassies or posts during this nine-month registration period. The resolution said that overseas absentee voters who failed to vote in the last two national elections would be removed from the voting list. The Department of Foreign Affairs estimates that more than eight million Filipinos are staying outside the country. Of the half a million registered as absentee voters, only 81,732 voted in the last senatorial elections. | 
