The long awaited first ever automated election in the Philippines has finally commenced and now, the nation is waiting for the election results. They said the automation can be compared to giving birth to a first born where the mother experience pains and discomforts for the first time and is learning the rudiments of being a parent.
Filipinos, as I see it, both hated and loved the automation. We criticized it and lambasted COMELEC and Smartmatic for the faulty PCOS and malfunctioning systems. Many hated the long lines and waiting for hours just to cast their votes and others protested that their names weren’t in the computerized voters’ list which resulted to them not participating in the May 2010 election.
For me and my husband though who decided to go to the voting precincts in the afternoon experienced easiness in voting. Unlike my friends and family who went to the poll precincts early and commented that their experience was like finding the diet pills that work because they lost pounds for sweating big time waiting for their turn to vote, my husband and I voted easily and need not wait for long lines. The PCOS also accepted our official ballot on the first try.
And the biggest success of the automation is the fact that in less than a day, local officials are already proclaimed in some cities and provinces and hopefully, the national winning candidates will be proclaimed in less than two days too. The election count is much easier and faster now and I believe it’s time to say goodbye to manual election. While it is true that technology have its glitches but in terms of election in the Philippines, the automated election somehow eradicated the notion of massive cheating in election by manipulating the tallied votes. This is despite the fact though that many are still skeptic about the accuracy of the reading of the PCOS machines and the fact that for some reason, the computerized counting of votes maybe hacked or manipulated.
For now, I wanted to trust the new system and resting my hope in it that this election will proclaim the right candidates and hopefully, these people will run this country with utmost believe in genuine public service.
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