Post-election ramblings

I didn’t get to vote.

Despite what I believe was our best effort, my wife and I didn’t get the chance to exercise our constitutional right to cast our vote on whom we have chosen to lead our country.

We arrived along with our youngest child and only daughter Faith to the usual polling place at the GSIS Village in Project 8, from our Fairview residence. As registered voters in the 1st District of Quezon City, we came to this familiar place a covered basketball court beside the relatively newly installed Holy Family Parish Church thinking the first automated elections would make things less difficult for the ordinary voter.

I was wrong.

What welcomed us was a sea of humanity soaked in sweat and soaring humidity. From my estimate, around 6-7 polling precincts were grouped into clusters which all had one single line for all incoming voters. I estimate there were at least seven long lines that didn’t move. Imagine a scenario of around a hundred people in front of you in a line among many lines that literally didn’t move.

At some point I decided to bring my wife and daughter to a nearby shopping mall to rest, eat lunch and bid our sweet time for the lines at the very least shorten and the people to somewhat dwindle.

Again, I was wrong.

After hours of wandering around the mall, buying a couple of DVDs and even an unplanned purchase of a LG DVD player, I was simply aghast at the scene we went back to at the covered court.

The lines have not receded at all. Worse, some like our line were even longer when we left them! My frustration grew as I again queued hoping they would move even at a snail’s pace.

Frustratingly, I was wrong a third time.

I got the chance to talk to Arsenio, a cousin who lived nearby my parents’ home in the village. He was in the same line I was, still quite a distance from the middle part of the said line. He talked about a couple of PCOS machines, those much controversial ballot counting electronic equipment bogging down, which probably exacerbated the controlled subtle disorder of this voting exercise.

At some time after four in the afternoon, the line not even budging an inch, with much regret and disappointment, I decided to call it quits. I had asked my wife that we just went back home. Equally exasperated with the situation, she immediately concurred.

Sad and tired, we went back to our Fairview abode. There I had to console myself with the news that generally speaking, elections were peaceful and orderly in many parts of the country. Thankfully, the voice of the vast majority was heard and not disenfranchised as my wife and I were.

Days after the momentous elections, I’m still much saddened by the fact that I didn’t get to vote.

I do hope that the concerned Commission on Elections (COMELEC) officials particularly in our voting area will seriously consider physically reconfiguring the polling precincts to make it more efficient. For one, the covered basketball court cannot accommodate the more than 5,000 and growing voting population assigned to these precincts now and more so in future elections especially in the light of Filipino voters’ large turn-outs in our country.