Philippines' First Automated Election

Like many Filipinos, I lined up today under the sweltering heat of the sun to cast my vote. It's the Philippines' first automated national elections making it a historical event in more ways than one.

I went to my polling place with my 76-year old mother and my 6-year old nephew. My mom, being a senior citizen, didn't have to queue and she finished voting in no time. I lined up at 11:25 a.m and I thought it was a short line because I was not that far from the class room door of my precinct. Little did I know my line was leading to a "waiting room" where voters like me would have to sit it out until we could be accommodated next door where the actual voting was taking place.

A man next to me grumbled that the system was "pangit" (ugly). I just gave him a weak smile because aside from a jug of cold water I also brought with me a lot of patience. It was 1:00 p.m. when I was finally asked to move to the next classroom to vote.

I have my digital camera with me because I really want to document the process. To be safe, I also brought my press ID but I didn't wear it because it might call some unnecessary attention to me.

After the teacher gave me my ballot and a folder to cover it, I tried to take a chair near the PCOS machine. However, another voter beat me to it so I had to settle to one that's near the door. I still managed to take few pictures though before I finally focused on the task at hand which was to vote.

I didn't even cover my ballot. I didn't care who saw who I voted for. I only voted for a president, vice president, 7 senators, one Party List and a mayor. Then I walked over to the polling clerk manning the PCOS machine. That was when I managed to take this short video where a voter had her ballot fed to the machine with no problem, followed by her getting a drop of indelible ink on her index finger. I wanted to take a close-up picture of the machine, but I was stopped and had to turn off my camera. It's okay because I already have at least one good shot and this video.



All in all, it was a relatively painless experience for me. I was glad my precinct didn't have the technical problems with the PCOS machine unlike in other places around the country. Except for the long wait that makes me wish I'm already a senior citizen just for today, I was glad I didn't skip this election.

When I got back to my car, I turned on the radio for some news and there were a lot of talk about election hotspots. I thought, in this heat, all areas are election "hot spots". No wonder people were fainting and one man even died from heart attack brought about by the debilitating heat.

Automated election fever

I'm quite excited to go to my voting precinct on Monday when we elect our 15th president and other executive, legislative and local officials. It will be our first automated election and I want to get my hands on one of those Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. It's been a long, long journey for the Philippines to computerize its elections. When I started my IT journalism career in 1990 there was already efforts to junk the manual counting of votes and canvassing of election returns. I still vividly remember one headline we ran: "YORAC SAYS NO TO ARINC SYSTEM". The late Haydee Yorac was then Commissioner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and ARINC, if I remember it correctly, joined the bidding to automate the election, but it obviously didn't materialize.

In 2003, a consortium called Mega Pacific also made a bid to computerize the elections. But alleged flaws or irregularities in the bidding process led several groups, including those from the IT sector, to ask the Comelec to nullify the P1.2 billion contract it awarded to Mega Pacific.

Now, we have Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) as the technology provider for the country’s first ever nationwide automated elections that will cost the country about P11 billion. A great digital divide will be crossed on Monday, when all Filipinos who will vote -- young and old, rich and poor -- get to use the same technology to make their voices heard. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this first automated election will be relatively successful.