Sunday, May 9, 2010

Halalan 2010

Voting number. Sequence number.

Our government have poured resources to explain how to use the PCOS machines but seemed to have forgotten to explain the changes made in the queuing process. The result: BEDLAM!

The voters were used to the old procedure where you just look for your assigned precinct room and then getting in line to vote. Now, you need to go to a table where you fill up a while paper slip (surname first please) where they will identify your precinct’s voting room. Once in the room assignment, you’d already think of lining up to vote---no, no, no---you need to get a pink paper slip from somebody. Nope, this person is mobile and no table where you can easily go to and get what you need. Eventually you notice a group building up in a corner. It was like seeing a floating carcass being feasted on by a group of sharks. After getting through the throng of eager voters, you are again lost! Can you line up now? No, no, no---the pink slip contained your voting queue but the lady distributing the pink slip was too dazed to explain I still needed to go to the voter’s list and look for my sequence number. Apparently, the sequence number will help the watchers to easily find you on the list where you need to sign after voting. Not knowing what to do, I did the next logical thing---MAGTANONG-TANONG!

The voter’s list was posted somewhere. Lo and behold---there’s another “shark feast” building on the door of the other room. It was chaos just weaving your way in this melee! After much jousting I finally got my way to the list and found equal disarray! There were 4 lists posted and it was like playing find-the-key-that-opens-the-box! My oh my! Finding the precinct number was equally challenging since it was of the same font as the rest of the text---Times New Roman 10!

It was two hours wait time after this and if you have your list ready, around 5 minutes voting time. I was number 237 and my wife 239. In a way, ours was a more organized precinct since the other precinct beside our room was only at # 85!

Hay buhay! At least I and my wife are done exercising our voting rights! Now we wait who’s going to be our next president! God help us all!

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