Taking Part in the Country's First-ever Automated Polls

Today is the Philippines' first-ever automated presidential and local elections. And I almost gave up my right to vote. ALMOST.

I was excited to cast my first-ever ballot. When I accompanied my mom in the past, voting took only a few minutes especially if you already knew your precint number. Since I already knew mine, I wasn't in any hurry. After all, the Administration promised that the automation would minimize the risk of cheating AND speed things up.

To my dismay, the lines were so loooonnnggg. I did not think much about the number of people milling about when we arrived. It was usually that way anyway. But my mom and I saw some of our neighbors and chatted them up. Turns out we had the same cluster number, and they weren't done yet. They told us that the end of the line was already at the 4th floor while the assigned room was at the 2nd floor. To make things worse, the lines were barely moving at all.

Because of the automation, they had this clustering system wherein four or five precints were clustered and assigned one PCOS (Precint Count Optical Scan) machine. Since the classrooms were small and election paraphernalia minimal, only a limited number of voters were allowed inside. And for those not familiar with shading, it took them long to cast their votes most of them causing delay. Thus, the long lines.

We saw some neighbors who were already done and they told us they were in line since 7:00AM. At that point, we were all set on going home without voting as my mom was already warned that falling in line would be too much for her and she might faint. But we did try one last time to check the end of the line and to inqure if there was an express lane for senior citizens. Fortunately, there was. So my mom plus two of our neighbors got to "jump" the line. I asked if they could also allow me on the express lane since I was accompanying a senior citizen. I also mentioned I had work at 12:00 noon just so they could accomodate my request. I wasn't allowed so I didn't insist. My other neighbor who was accompanying the other two senior citizens tried a a different tactic and said that if we weren't allowed inside then we'd have to fall in line and the three seniors would have to wait for us to finish, which would defeat the purpose of the express lane for them. They'd still have to endure the heat and the discomfort. However, we still weren't allowed.

When one of the three seniors finished voting, she told the poll watcher to let us in since they wouldn't be able to go home without us. She pulled us inside the room, told the watcher her companion was a wife of a Phil. Air Force officer. And added that I was a government employee with matching threats about how they'd have problems with getting out of the country, etc. Pushed in to line, I laughed nervously with my neighbor as we waited our turn to vote. We finished the voting process in no time, and we all went home satisfied that we maximized our right of suffrage.

Now all we can do is wait and pray. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed.