Case Digest: Tolentino v. COMELEC, G.R. No. L-34150, October 16, 1971

 Political Law Review | The 1973 Constitution 

  • A Constitutional Convention convened in 1971, under the 1935 Constitution, approved Organic Resolution No. 1 on September 28, 1971, proposing to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 (Section 1, Article V).

  • President Macapagal tasked COMELEC with conducting a plebiscite on this single amendment, coinciding with the November 8 local and senatorial elections.

  • Arturo Tolentino filed a petition for prohibition to stop the plebiscite, arguing that submitting one amendment separately breached the 1935 Constitution.


Whether submitting only a single amendment separately for popular ratification violate Section 1, Article XV of the 1935 Constitution, which mandates submission in “an election” (singular). YES

  • Organic Resolution No. 1, COMELEC’s implementing acts, and the proposed plebiscite is null and void in so far as they pertained to the separate ratification of the voting-age amendment. 

  • All proposed amendments by a Constitutional Convention must be submitted in a single plebiscite, because Section 1, Article XV refers to submission in "an election", taken to mean only one.

  • Allowing piecemeal ratification would deprive voters of a complete “frame of reference”, as they could not meaningfully assess the proposed amendment in relation to the rest of the constitutional revisions.

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