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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

2010 AUTOMATED ELECTION: Effective or not?

A lot of speculations arose before the coming of the 2010 automated election. Since it is the first time for the Filipino people to vote using automated machines, some were hesitant, a lot were excited, and most people were intrigued. Will the cheating be ended? Will the machines work? Will the voting be consuming a little time? Or will it be the same as the previous elections we had in the past years? People became worried that there will still be cheating because people are aware that the machine will be using CF cards to store the data of the election results. They believed that there is a tendency that the CF cards already contain data or that the data can be hacked by experts. Few days before the election, some problems arose especially during the testing of the PCOS machines. Some PCOS machines have problems. Voters are also worried since the nation is experiencing power interruptions, there might be a worse scenario of a power block out during the election.
Election Day came. As early as 6 in the morning, many voters were excited to come to their voting precinct to vote. They expected that the flow of the voting will not take too long. They were so excited to vote for their bets. It took too long for us just to look for our voting precincts since there is a clustering of more than two precincts. We have to look for our names on the list of voters posted on the wall outside each clustered precinct room. The list of voters name is not that visible especially to those who don’t have a perfect 20-20 vision and to those who are senior citizens. The font sizes of the text are too small and the printing is not that clear. After we have found and know our precincts, we have to wait again to be accommodated. We have to wait for our time to be accommodated in the verification of voters. Election officials assigned in the verification have to look for our names in the file of documents, make some comparisons of those stuffs that need to be compared, voters have to sign and after signing, wait again to be able to get inside the precinct and vote. Priority numbers were issued but to my observation, it didn’t help the situation. Some election personnel were not using their common sense in accommodating the voters who already have priority numbers. The have to wait for all the voters inside to finish voting before they call for another batch. Why didn’t they call another voter to occupy the place of the one who already have voted? Why wait for the room to be emptied before they call for another batch of voters? Imagine? For over an hour, they only have accommodated less than 30 voters. Some voters were irritated and have decided to go home. There were many negative feedbacks about the election. Some say that the manual election is better than the automated one. Some PCOS machine won’t work. Ballots were not accepted by the machine. Circles to be shaded in the ballot are too small. People expected that it would be a little bigger just like the ones in the sample ballot. With that, it would be easier for the voters especially the senior citizens to do the shading. The COMELEC should have also posted ahead of time, maybe at least two or three days before the election day, the list of voters assigned in each clustered precinct for them to go directly to the their assigned room and not spend too much time looking for their names. We can still consider these things since it’s our first time to have an automated election. Since we already practice automation, everything should be high-tech. Why still look for the names of the voters in their bulky hard copies if we can have it thru computers. A personal computer, a scanner or a biometric machine and a signature pad are all we need to make things easier. Come to think about it. Maybe if you have the common sense, you know what I am trying to convey.

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josanne_jc
I am a married woman with a very cuddly baby boy. I love to write anything and everything under the sun. I am a teacher by profession.
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