Only in the Philippines!

The number of registered voters for the upcoming presidential elections in the Philippines has exceeded 50 million marks, the largest figure recorded in the Philippines' history, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said on Friday.



"We have more than 50 million registered voters, (or exactly) 50,086,054. This is the largest number so far," said Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez.

The figure excludes the 258,691 additional voters who registered in the last working days of last year, Jimenez said.

In the 2007 election, there were only 45,029,443 registered voters.

Jimenez said that the Comelec "expected" the number would go up this year as a result of increasing population in the Philippines.

Jimenez also said that the Comelec expected to finalize the list of voters by next week. And depending on that, he said, it would determine how many clustered precincts there will be.

At present, Jimenez said, the country has 75,471 clustered precincts. Each clustered precinct will have one Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machineeach of which can supposedly accommodate up to 1,000 voters.