My Bad Experience while Voting on the First Automated Election

@Danzylop (1120)
Philippines
May 11, 2010 8:07am CST
The story starts when I walked to the school to cast my vote on May 10. It was 8:00 when I arrived. I thought it is going to be an easy thing since the election before, it was effortless. To my surprise, when I checked the clocked it was already 3PM yet I am still on a stacked long exodus. I skip lunch just for my one vote to make sure that I can cast my vote but sad to say. My knees are shaking already maybe because of the hunger and the coldness of the big drops of the rain that I was exposed to. at 5PM I decided to go home toe at and change clothes. I thought I cant come back since the time limit is until 6PM only. Good thing was the extension of Comelec until 7PM so I immidiately went back to the school and went to the then short line. I had headache and I am with a fever now. in short, the election happened was the worst! I
1 person likes this
8 responses
@sweechi (157)
• Philippines
12 May 10
its is sad that you had a bad experience while voting on the first automated elections. I guess this is because many things are done so fast in order to make this election automated. I was lucky though to be able to finish mine in just 20 mins.
@AmbiePam (92771)
• United States
13 May 10
I'm sorry it was such an ordeal. I'm sure next year things will have improved. The first time around is always a trial and error event. The next time elections roll around, surely the people in charge will have worked out the kinks everyone experienced this time. I'm glad you got to vote though. I always anticipated voting. I felt good exercising such an important right.
@AmbiePam (92771)
• United States
14 May 10
Seven billion? Who the heck spends that much on voting machines?!
@Danzylop (1120)
• Philippines
14 May 10
I would like to make another thread for this discussion but it might violate mylot rules. Can I ask you guys about the automated election with regards to the 7Billion spent on it. I thought the machines that we used is going to be owned by Comelec but I am surprised to know that we have juust rented it out!.. Imagine 7 Billion every election. LOL! +inflation.
@neildc (17239)
• Lapu-Lapu City, Philippines
12 May 10
i guess i could say that still, you are lucky to have voted. in some places, there were really some people who were not able to vote. some have their names not listed in the list of voters. some people, because of the long lines, they choose not to vote instead. your experience is as bad as me and my wife had experienced. the long line of people waiting for their priority numbers. people were complaining about the slow movement inside the polling precincts. tiring, hunger, thirst, dust, smell of different people, headache, etc. they were all present in that election. but because we only have one vote, we kept our patience and waited for 7 hours, for just a 10 minute shading the candidates we have chosen.
@Danzylop (1120)
• Philippines
14 May 10
hi neildc! wahahah! I am so LoLing reading about that smell of different people. That was actually the reason why I took me the whole day to cast my vote. I kept on leaving the line when i get at the side of a sweating person and with all the smell around him + the insensitive people smoking behind you. I am so sensitive about smoke and bad smell as i feel suffocated with it. Just to inform you also, about a half of the entire voters were not able to vote so that made the twist of the results.
@neildc (17239)
• Lapu-Lapu City, Philippines
16 May 10
it's really too bad that a lot of people were not able to vote. and i heard, if i am correct, 50 percent of the registered voters? yeah, definitely, the results will have a great twist if the percentage of voters turn-out is higher.
• Philippines
12 May 10
Im sorry to hear that and yes, this election is one of the worst painstaking elections ever. The good thing though is that, this has been one of well fast and cleaner Philippine elections happened. I hope that our COMELEC would be able to come up with a better system in the next elections.
@geniustiger (1694)
• Philippines
12 May 10
Hi there Danzylop! Sorry to hear your bad experienced this new election. It is really true because all precincts have different clustered one and the voters are more approximately one thousand so that's the thing happened. I am one of the B.E.I we also have hard time to do the job being the one who man the voting in the precincts. This is to be revised next time as the voters have having hard to time to wait for their priority number to cast their votes. We have also many things to sign and do before the voters go out from the precincts.Imagine the PCOS machine approved for how many minutes sometimes it will also jam and do not accept more ballots if that happens. We will need to call the attention first to the I.T personnel to check the situation and that's the time it goes back also. Machine also work slow as it is used long time imagine from 6am until late at midnight. So COMELEC officials will make some changes on the process in voting as the time alloted not suited w/ the number of voters. In the next precinct their voters line until 9pm plus and they are allowed to vote as they are already in the line. So it must be decreased might be to five hundred voters. Long time before the automation voters in the precincts is only 200 plus and now they make into one the seven precincts so that's the scenario happen.
@Danzylop (1120)
• Philippines
14 May 10
That was the process that Ive been. the first step was to go to a table and get your name(with the precint number and voter sequence number) written on a pink paper then give it the support staff to get the priority number in a room next to the voting precint. and then you have to fall in line again to the voting precint. I find it so unnecessary as it only enraged the people. I understand the BEI wants it to be organized but it is inefficient. Voters can actually fall in one line. People know their names so it is necessary to list down names on that piece of paper. Voters have their ID in fact( I have my Drivers license). The issue was resolved then when one of the Team Leaders went to the PNP booth and complained. The PNP Personnel made one longer line but a faster one. There was no need to call for priority numbers and wait(they even shout it 3 times like theyre gonna blow their throat. Their was no loner triple verification of identities as the verification inside the voting precint was sufficient however, those who do not have valid IDs were not allowed to cast their vote(unless both watchers from different parties testify the identity or allows.
25 May 10
hahaha historical date and event! May 10, 2010, first automated election. Me and my family decided to go to the voting place early at 7:35am, but we were shocked, there were a lot people who were there earlier than us falling in a very long line and in a zigzag line, actually i have photos at my facebook. I belong to cluster 1a,1b,2a,3a and 4a. five precinct in 1 cluster imagine? the support staff was my cousin i thought it would be easier for me to get priority number but sadly not, his very strict. I got disappointed that time,til I decided to wait i got number 304, and then i wait, I WAITED SO LONG! I VOTED AT EXACTLY 5:43PM! after that we helped other voters to find their names at the master lists. there were a lot of commotions and panics because there were precinct that decided to close but there were still voters at the voting place. we called up the regional comelec officers for help. thanks God she grant our request to still continue the voting til the all the voters who were at the polling place could vote. our precinct ends at exactly 11:00pm.
• Philippines
11 May 10
wow, that was hard danzylop well, i never knew that the school that we used to vote closed down so we had to fall in line in one of the barangays here. my first time to fall the line while voting in an automated election, luckily we were that early because there's so many people and two machines in a very small place.my glad you got the chance to vote. it's all over now.
• Philippines
12 May 10
really bad for you dude coz you got sick just because of you want to vote. well almost everyone experience the long long line up of voters including me, i went to the school where i will vote at 11:00 am and finished casting my vote at 2:00 pm already. its my first time voting and actually i thought that it would only take me 15 minutes to vote but i guess, you just cant expect everything to run smoothly especially if its the first time.