Now this part I didn't do. I was fortunate to have access to the internet and used the Precinct Finder of COMELEC.
Now that voting is automated, the biggest problem we've encountered is not on the voting itself but on the crowd control and the queuing system. Here, the voters are experiencing slight confusion on where line to fall in. The voters are sorted into 9 precincts per room which they termed as Clustered precinct. I think there are almost 1000 voters per room.No authorities are informing or assisting the voters on what to do. I think they (authorities) just assumed that voters know what to do because of the voter's education drives being broadcast or posted on various forms of media. The voters just took it upon themselves to organized the line. Although there are some run of the mill "balahuras and balasubas" (shameless people) who cut in the line, people posing as senior citizens and others. I even encountered a kapal muks (nervy) woman who stole a mineral water (intended only for the election officers). She brought her son with her. The kid asked her mother to give him water near the doorway. At first the mother asked an election officer if she can give a bottle of mineral water to her son. The officer politely said that she's sorry because the bottles are all accounted for the personnel (and besides there are refreshments stands outside of the precinct she can easily asked us to save her spot on the line.) The woman responded sheepishly with a smile but when the officer turns her back the woman took a bottle of mineral water. People saw what she did. She just responded with "hindi naman mahahalata" (I'm sure she won't notice) with a smug face as she handed the mineral water to her kid. Kapal muks talaga!!! The woman doesn't even look naghihikahos (poor) in fact based from what she's telling her friends (also in the line) she has a car and air-conditioned house. The kid at his age , he already understood what her mother has done. He'll grow up thinking that taking advantage of other people is ok as long as they won't notice it. Now if these are our new generation, I can clearly see how our future will end up. I can't help but wonder if our corrupt politicians grew up with the same kind of parent's or guardians.
There are only 4 personnel.The man on the white shirt and the woman in pink shirt verifies the identity of the voter. The problem here is they are not organized.The voter's list are not arranged and because the verifiers are having a hard time looking for the name of the voter the list was unstapled so the voter's can help out in finding their names. Is this even allowed?
Then on the next table the woman in red shirt got confused with the voter's nagging and she because she can't handle the crown she allowed other voters to get their own precinct form to sign. There is no clear line. Both the in and out voters are mixed and the officers are having a hard time in controlling them.
The officer in charge of the voting area was having problems with disorderly voter's they don't surrender their folders to her. Instead they give it to people they know so they will be next to receive ballots even though there were already voters waiting in line. Markers were also pocketed. The officer was pleading to the voters to surrender the markers because they only have limited supplies and those are the only markers that will work on the ballots. Absolutely no consideration for other's properties.Witnessing these flares me up! In a perfect world, people are looking out for each other. But this world is not perfect so it is people looking out for themselves. How sad... Makarma sana kayo mga balahura. (Hope karma will bite you in the ass!)
Step 4 have to wait because in this picture the woman in white nervously laughing saying "hehe makulong naku po kanyan" (harhar I might get imprisoned now). She's the Tech Support from smartmatic. As she enters the room, she was on the phone describing to her supervisor what went wrong with the PCOS machine. Actually, before the Tech Support arrived the machine only encountered paper jam after "nomnoming" (being fed with) 101 ballots. That is easy to fix says the IT specialist (just a voter) who is now reading the manual of the PCOS machine.We are both willing to help the officer to fix it but the Officer was reluctant because I think they are not allowed to troubleshoot the machine without the SmartMatic Tech Support which is totally understandable.As for the Tech Support it is not totally her fault. Base from media reports, almost all Tech support don't know how to troubleshoot the machines. That only means that the fault is on their supervisor or whoever is training them.
After they removed the back-up flash card and fix other stuff including shaking the ballot box (oh and by the way, we're told before that the ballot box should be translucent so that we can see the shadow silhouette of the ballot being fed... so what happened?).
After a few minutes, tuloy ang ligay (to be continued...) on with step 4.
Same with step 2-3 unorganized.
We started at 7:00 am finished at 10:47am. 3 hours and 47 minutes of patience in exchange for 6 years of (hopefully) worthwhile administration.
Despite all the can of worms we've took from our first ever automated election, over all it was not that bad. It's just natural to encounter problems from first time events. The next election, we will be more prepared and equip to handle problems that will arise. And also let's not forget that the "evil doers" also now know how the automation works; they can now create a new automated cheat system. We should not be complacent with the existing security features. After this election, COMELEC and Smartmatic should work on the disabled features of the machines and device a queuing system that will work.
Now that campaigning is over.
Who's gonna clean up this shit ?
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