Philippines 2010 Election

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It may not matter to the other members but it's worth sharing. I'm from the Philippines, and on Monday (May 10, 2010) we're going to choose a new President. It's crazy (in an active good/bad way) here and older people keep on saying that the election has never been as exciting as now. The 2010 election will also be a great leap for our nation, it's the first election to be automated. Machines, name PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scanner) will be used to count the votes. It used to be manual counting where an election officer will manually count the votes on each sheet of paper, and the counting will never stop until the last of the ballots is accounted for. And if a losing candidate decides to file an electoral protest, it's a recount. With the machines, the COMELEC (Commission on Election) promises that it will be faster and less prone to cheating. I guess we'll find out in the next 2-3 days. We're a democratic country (thanks to the US) and my father loves it that way. I don't know if any of you have tried voting but it makes you feel like your part of the country's decision. (Just a feeling, though. My vote will count as one in around 50 Million voters.) Common Problems: 1. Vote Buying. Some candidates will try to bribe you into voting for them. I've been offered money by candidates. I declined. Some are smart enough to accept the money and vote for the good candidate, some are just plain stupid. 2. Dagdag/Bawas (A local term). It's during the manual counting when a bribed election officer increases the number of votes of the briber and decrease the votes of the opposing candidate. 3. Misinformation. We are dreamy people. When promised with something really great like "alleviation of poverty" and "a war against corruption", we'll definitely hear you out. And this has been used by candidates since we started running our country. Fortunately, the internet has been playing a major role in the information dissemination. Pinoy bloggers have since digging the truth about each candidate and it's like the online community of the Philippines is now being ran by Internet Media. 4. Media bias. Media-men picks a candidate and uphold him, and stomps on the opposing side. It's everywhere. The Internet Media, however, has been really kin on the choices. Bloggers are always just an email away. These are just some of the common problems with Philippine Politics. It will take decades, if not a century to straighten this out. I hope the Filipino people will choose the right president next week. Just sharing. Thank you for reading.

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Here some news I concluded on:In the elections of May, the Church sends more than 45 thousand volunteers in the various parishes of the country to monitor polling stations, denouncing the fraud and sensitize the population to vote responsibly. The group name is Parish Pastoral Council for Responsable Voting (Ppcrv) and is an initiative of the Philippine Bishops Conference. Through an information campaign launched yesterday in Manila Ppcrv volunteers teach people the use of new systems of electronic scanning of votes prepared by the government.

 

"Our job is to control the behavior of voters - said Henrietta de Villa Ppcrv responsible - when people know they have to vote with responsibility, the frequency of fraud decreases. "The mission of the Church - still - is also to help the country to have free elections and clear, which is one of the major problems of our nation."

 

Philippine elections have always been at vote-buying, intimidation and fraud. This is due to the "feudal" that characterizes the families of the candidates and the electoral environment often leads to murder and violence against the population. After the bloody events related to the elections that took place in Maguindanao last Nov. 23, the government created in 2010 a new automatic counting of votes. It is a made from a computer-readable ballot paper which seeks to limit human intervention in the control of votes. With the old system were in fact the election observers hired by candidates to check manually every single vote.