My Experience With the Country’s First Automated Elections

Monday, May 10, 2010. Our family woke up early like we always do every election day. We like to be at our precinct early so that we’d be able to vote quickly and not spend the whole day waiting in line. We arrived at our precinct before 7:00 AM and were surprised to see that a lot of people were already waiting in line to vote. In our area, it turned out that six voting precincts were squeezed into one cluster, totaling to about at least 600 voters per classroom (and per machine), where in the past it was only about a hundred persons per classroom. I heard that we only had four machines in our area, hence the consolidation.

Good thing senior citizens and disabled persons didn’t have to wait in line. It was very hot very early in the morning, and without this privilege, they wouldn’t have survived the day. We have one senior citizen and one disabled person in our family, and they were the first in line. They didn’t encounter any difficulty, while the three of us left in line stood in the scorching heat for about two hours.

At least our machine didn’t act up. I listed my preferred candidates beforehand, so I finished in just about five minutes. If only there were one machine per precinct (not per cluster), it would have been a lot faster. I hope that next election the COMELEC would increase the number of machines.

I don’t know what to make of this country’s first automated election. It’s still not cheat-proof because in one area a machine was opened due to overheating and the ballots were collected, to be fed, I think, to a backup machine. A few areas declared failure of election due to violence. One area had their machine destroyed. Some areas couldn’t transmit their election returns because of the lack of signal. All in all I think it’s lack of preparation. Shifting to automation should have been done gradually and not all at once unless everybody is well prepared.

On the brighter side, the voter turnout this year was phenomenal. I think the media, with the help of various social networking sites, were successful in promoting to the public how important it is that they exercise their right to vote. With Noynoy Aquino winning the presidency (though he wasn’t whom I voted for; he was my third choice), at least we can say that more and more people are taking the elections seriously, that more and more people are thinking about whom they want to run this country. My generation may not live to see our country mature politically, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.