MANILA - A Commission on Elections official admitted on Monday it will be difficult to enforce the right of prisoners to vote due to limitations on logistics and staff complement.

"It will be difficult for us to pull out the detainees' names from the original polling precincts and put them in one place," spokesman James Jimenez told reporters on Monday after a Comelec hearing on the petition of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to allow prisoners to vote.
 
The CHR has petitioned the Comelec to set up polling places inside jails to allow eligible detainees to vote in May 2010.

Detainees eligible to vote referred to those who are awaiting their sentence, not those who are already convicted of crimes, stressed CHR chair Leila de Lima during the hearing.

Recognizing the eligible detainees' right to vote is one of the major reforms De Lima sought for when she assumed office last year. (Read: Prisoners have the right to vote—but will they be allowed to?)

According to De Lima, 43% of the qualified voters in jails or about 23,657 detainees were able to register.

Logistics, escorts
 
She suggested during the hearing that Comelec set up special polling precincts inside the jails instead of the regular practice of escorting privileged detainees to vote in polling places where they are registered.
 
Prisoners will also need to secure court orders before they can be assigned escorts and allowed to vote.
 
De Lima acknowledged that BJMP has a limited number of personnel to attend to all the eligible detainees.  "In Manila jails, for example, with more than 800 detainees, how many BJMP personnel will be needed?" de Lima told poll officials.
 
In Davao City, the BJMP has recorded over a thousand prisoners eligible to vote.

Section 155 of the Omnibus Election code states that “no polling place shall be located within the perimeters of or inside a military or police camp or within a prison compound.” But De Lima said “prison compounds” are only those that detain convicted criminals.
 
The Comelec has asked the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) to submit within 15 days its position on CHR’s petition.