After Casting my Votes for Election 2010

I just got home from the voting area. And finally! after waiting for 3 hours, it's all over. Now, I will just have to wait for the results but so far, so good.

The first thing that I noticed from the voting area (school) was that the voter's queue pr the "pila" was INSANELY long! Some people were just joking around to stay calm and alive and not get bored while waiting for their time to vote. There were also times when people from the other lines were fighting because of those people who insert between the lines. Those people that do "singit" is just unforgivable. Imagine some people were as early as 7 o'clock in falling in line but there are just some people who are just selfish enough to not think that other people respect other people's time and fall in line fairly. Of course, we all have our precious time and time is gold, but everybody's equal in times like these because we all equally invest our time to cast our votes. But sadly, some people just can't respect that and that some people may use power and authority to get in the line first. A sad reality that people practice and the simplest form of abuse of power.

Anyway, these things are pretty normal. But what made me sad is that what used to be so many different classrooms as the regular voting precincts are now "clustered" into just 6, yes six!, voting areas. And so people from four to five precincts are now clustered together, with just that fact given, you really have to expect long lines. But here comes the technology! Of course, automation speeds up the process and this, ideally, balances out the clustering of precincts. But it didn't. Maybe it was not because of the PCOS machine, admittedly, there were a few paper jams in my short stay in the voting area, but what I think is that people are also accounted for the long voting lines. As what I have observed, people are very anxious of their votes being rejected and some are even going to voting areas still undecided of who to vote. In my opinion, hell, you should go to the precincts prepared! You could have made a lineup at home given the amount of time you have each day and this is the future of the country we are talking about. So we could have just given 5 minutes to make a lineup ahead of time, think about your candidates, and check for the future of the country. Not to mention saving time, and giving more time for your fellow citizens to vote.

I'm just sad to hear stories of many people going home not casting their votes because the line moved very slowly. I just can't help but wonder, was this really the right time to implement an automated elections?.. Of course, we can all argue by saying, if not now when?.. I know that concern, because I am in the field of Information Technology and I, too, know the need and advantages of automated systems over the manual system. But it's just that too much are on steak in this election. this is the presidential elections! The elections for a great leader to lead our country, and the preparations were not perfect. What if some machines bog down, because there weren't really stress tests done in large scale implementations. A few days ago, there were reports that the machines cannot even read the local candidates, but reasons were said and corrections were made. My point is, in the field of IT engineering, the time that these machines were approved for the bidding process, it should have passed the needed requirement and test specifications. But how come, problems like these were found in a time days before the elections? We are just lucky that the problems were solved in time. I just want to say that, given the great risk of the presidential elections, why was this implementation not applied in an election with a smaller scale, like barangay elections, so when problems arise, the scale of the damage will not be that great and the risk will not be that great.

But again, this was happening. And I just pray and hope that everything will be smooth tonight. I trust the developers of the machines that they have done all the necessary checking and quality control that they can do in their power. Overall, I can say that the implementation was a success (praying hardly, that no problems will arise until all of these are over and the official results are announced). Congratulations to our country for moving forward with technology and embracing the benefits of automation. I just hope that the results will be good for this country that I love so much.