Foreign observers visited the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) on Monday, election day, as part of their monitoring mission during the synchronized national and local elections. Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Garcia assured the public that incarcerated persons whose cases are not yet final continue to exercise their right to vote.

“This is one of the areas they chose to observe,” said Chairman Garcia, who also visited the NBP. “They had no trouble getting in, and the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) coordinated properly. However, we reiterated that voters must not be approached while casting their votes — basic respect.”

At the national level, a total of 3,446 inmates under BuCor were eligible to vote, including 1,423 voters from the NBP alone. Most came from the maximum-security compound.

Garcia clarified that these inmates still have pending appeals and no final conviction, thus retaining their voting rights under Philippine law.

“Just because they’re in prison doesn’t mean they’re no longer Filipino citizens or registered voters,” he said. “A final judgment is needed before someone can be stripped of the right to vote.”

The votes cast inside NBP will not be processed there. Instead, ballots will be transported to the voters’ original precincts and batch-fed into vote-counting machines (VCMs), Garcia explained.