Preparing for May 10: EILER Jumpstarts Voters' Education Program

While the candidates for the upcoming elections grow steadfast in running each of their campaigns, a similar movement can be witnessed among the voting public. Several groups, mindful of the many questions on the viability of poll automation, have set out on informing the public about the new voting system. EILER has jumped into the same bandwagon through its Workers' Electoral Watch or WE-Watch project, which is a mechanism for educating the labor force and for mobilizing them to guard and document the electoral process.

Together with the Computer Professionals' Union or CPU, EILER conducted its first voters' education session in Barangay Talipapa, Caloocan City last February 7. Thirty-five members of the ASCKO Neighborhood Association joined the two-hour event.

“Mahalaga talagang malaman ang tungkol sa automation. Kahit nga yung marunong sa kompyuter hindi alam kung ano ang gagawin pagdating sa botohan, ano pa kaya yung mga illiterate?” said ASCKO's secretary while waiting for word on where the organizers would set up.

The venue originally housed a factory engaged in manufacturing tin products. After the company closed down, some of its employees – those who now comprise ASCKO - struck an agreement with the management that enabled them to build their homes in the compound. But a number of these households do not run on electricity during the day so the ASCKO officers still had to look for a place where the electrical equipment for the education session could be used. The group finally settled in an open area, with a few innovations to protect the participants from the mid-day heat.

The program first introduced the right to suffrage and the right of marginalized sectors to representation in Congress. To this, a greater portion of the audience readily volunteered their candidates of choice and the party lists that they would be supporting.

Then followed a discussion on the Automated Election System (AES), touching not only on its foreseen benefits but also on its possible loopholes. This included how the Precinct Count Optical Scan or PCOS machine functions, how election results are transmitted from the precinct level, and some novel measures incorporated in the system such as making the ballots and PCOS precinct-specific and using a one ballot per voter ratio. The audience was equally apprised of some apprehensions in the use of AES. For instance, concern over not having enough time to study the programs running the machines and the apparently inadequate contingency plans in case of jammed PCOS.

What seemed of greater interest to the participants, however, was the procedure for casting their votes. The presentation described the format of the ballots, the proper mode of indicating one's chosen candidate, the rules on overvoting and undervoting, and the right way of using the PCOS.

“Ang alam ko aabot ng one hundred forty-four ang party list na meron ngayon. Kung lahat 'yun nakasulat sa balota, marami ang malilito,”quipped one member of the audience. The possible confusion need not even be pegged at this number as the ballots may contain three-hundred names on each page. A suggestion was made to call on the COMELEC to release a sample of the actual ballots to be used on election day so that voters can practice locating their chosen candidates and party lists.

“Paano naman yung mga pasmado ang kamay?” voiced a worker upon hearing that the PCOS is programmed to reject votes or entire ballots whose shading go well beyond the alloted space. “Kapag na-reject na yung balota, hindi na pwedeng humingi ng bago? Di hindi na makakaboto?” came yet another inquiry that expressed only too clearly the concern of many over the easy disenfranchisement of voters under the AES.

Despite acknowledging the ways by which the right to vote could be curtailed through poll automation, the education session ended with a positive note. True that there are aspects of the new system that might elude even a high degree of prudence, but the public and the workers' sector in particular, through sheer vigilance, can still contribute to ensuring a clean and honest elections. It is precisely for this that the voters' education session is geared towards WE-Watch's next aim of creating a worker-based monitoring sytem for May 2010.