Confessions (and observations) of an election virgin..
I have earned my right to complain.
I only learned last Friday that I am officially registered to vote, thanks to Globe’s Comelectxt service, and to Ipe’s texting credits. I have no idea how I ended up registered.
I checked candidates’ websites and had my list of senatorial bets ready by Saturday morning.
At around 10 a.m., I walked to the school where I studied until Grade 4. Me, my mum, my aunt, and my uncle were all voting in one classroom - the Home Economics "classhome" which I managed to avoid when I was in elementary. I was never cut for household chores, crochets, sewing, etc.
The school was quiet and there weren’t so many people around. We did not even have to wait for our turn to vote. I hope it didn’t mean that people have totally lost their hope in the electoral system, as dismal as it may seem.
I finished writing down the names of my favored candidates. I felt like only nine deserved my trust. I stared at the three blank spaces and contemplated a bit but I decided that I won’t take the risk and vote for candidates with questionable experience, or those who have pending judicial cases, much less to those who should just remain in the movies or in music. Pardon my ignorance, but I really had no idea Victor Wood had legislative aspirations.
I was also not so keen on wasting my ink on people whose previous performance or future plans are alien to me. Hence, I skipped most of the spaces for the local candidates, except for the mayor and vice mayor. They make a good tandem - with the mayor focused on the town’s local businesses, and the vice mayor focused on youth-oriented projects - and there has been some degree of progress in our small town. No one was stupid enough to run against the mayor. A former mayor, however, was going against the vice.
I did not vote for the incumbent governor who was running for another term. He has been in that post for as long as I can remember, and Zambales still looks the same to me.
I did not vote for my mom’s friend who’s running for vice governor. She’s just the wife of a long-time politician from the next city, and I believe her selling point is merely her looks.
My mum was making a fuss near the ballot box when I got to it. Apparently, some guy dropped her ballot for her and she said she should be the one to do it since she’s the voter. When it was my turn, I did what I should and walked out happy.
I was reminded of my childish clumsiness when I crossed the pedestrian lane on my way home. When I was six or seven, I challenged a former classmate/neighbor and now best friend to a race while crossing the street. I ran as fast as I could and ended up chin (yep, not face, thankfully) down the asphalt. I must have cried all the way to our house.
I was trying to clean the black ink on my right thumb with a sample ballot as I walked home when it hit me - my index finger was clean. Someone was careless enough to sabotage my first-time voting experience, and I was not going to let him get away with it.
My aunt was patient enough to accompany me back to the precinct. I showed my finger to the teacher, went to the ink guy and said, "Kaya pala ang daming flying voters."
I was sincerely worried. How many election staff would forget to put that grotesque stain on a voter’s finger? I mean, of course it’s not really as indelible as it claims to be, but it is still a safeguarding measure against the "bad guys."
I went back to the precincts at around 4:30 p.m. Some rooms were still preparing their tally sheets while some were already ready to start counting. It bothers me that some watchers had no discipline to keep their asses at least a few meters from the ballot box, even if they have no bad intentions on it, and that some election staff had not seem to mind it. Manual counting is just too slow and it takes at least three minutes to read a ballot. Too much time, too much space, and too much room for possible fraud.
It took me about 45 minutes to observe in seven different precincts, taking happy note that Chiz Escudero was leading. Victor Wood had one vote.
