Election Day 2010

Scenes at 6:30 A.M. during the election day.

The picture above shows people who were looking for their names in the list. Following the instruction given by the BEI that each voter have to list down their precinct number and the sequence number for faster processing.

While they were still searching for their names, I already got my priority number. It's number 10! I was so glad since the first batch to vote will be 10 people and I was included.

At exactly 7 A.M. the voting has started. I wait for my turn patiently outside the polling place. I was last in the line of batch 1. When my number was called I then give my priority number, precinct number and

sequence number and I received my ballot. After few minutes I finished shading ovals for my choices completely. I was the fourth to feed ballot on the PCOS machine. It was fast and easy.

Testing and Sealing of the PCOS Machine

The PCOS machine. Taken on May 8, 2010 during the testing and sealing.

The testing was smooth and we never encounter any problem. There were 10 trial ballots distributed to the people who were present. They tried to make a little fold on the ballot and it was still accepted. Another voter shaded ovals more than the specified number of candidates and it was still accepted by the machine. But during the manual counting that we did to check if it will match the printed election returns, we have proven that over voting ballots will never be counted. We heard it in the news too. We also have one rejected ballot during the trial voting. That ballot was from a youth who just make a dot at the center of the oval, and all of us inside the polling place have proven it's result.

The picture below shows the printing of the E.R. in 8 copies both national and local results. It was fast and easy.

Election

In front of my PC now, tired and don't exactly know what to do. I am still exhausted after serving the 2010 Philippine National Elections. That was almost 27 hours to get things done.

At 3am on May 10 we were already at the COMELEC to get the things needed for the election. We only have to get the ballot, ballot box and some stocks needed since PCOS machines were already kept in the school after the testing and sealing that was done on May 8, 2010.

Before the sun gets high we were already in the polling place ready to serve the 980 voters from 5 precincts that was clustered into one. I never thought it was as tough as it was. At first it runs smoothly but when a huge number of people attacked us and are all excited about the first automated election and the shading thingy, all of them wants to be first even though they were given priority numbers. I was disappointed actually of their violent reactions. Well it's part of the game and I could not blame them. Of course who would like them to wait for long? We are also trying our best just to cater them all. With the 5 precincts into one?

Anyway, there is always the first time. I hope that in the next automated election, the number of voter's in each polling place would be lessen.