149 Minutes
By Arvin Antonio V. Ortiz
Nervous, I inserted my ballot into the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scanner) machine. I was nervous because what if the PCOS would reject my ballot like it did to the woman's before me. The PCOS didn’t reject her ballot at all, but she inserted it six times before her ballot was counted. Less than a minute passed when the words “Congratulations! Your vote has been counted” finally appeared. I sighed.
What the COMELEC (Commission on Elections) said was really true. With the automated elections, the counting of the ballots would no longer take a long time, unlike the manual elections. But it’s too early to celebrate.
Lest we forget, the searching of polling precinct, the lining up—all those, too, are part of the election. And there are so many things that can be said of them. So many, in fact, that I don’t know where to begin.
Perhaps I’d begin with my arrival. If the election were manual, I would have arrived at the polling precinct very early. But no, the election was now automated. Which, as the COMELEC promised, is faster and more efficient. There was therefore no need for me to hurry.
When I woke up in the morning of election day, I turned on the TV, and then, rather than prepare to leave for the polls, watched what’s going on in other parts of the Philippines instead. Over at ABS-CBN, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was shown voting. Per ABS-CBN’s calculation, GMA took only six minutes to vote. I figured if it’s that fast, I would go to the precinct at 8:00 in the morning.
The night before the election day, I had planned what would I wear and what would I bring. To warn the voters that they would get nowhere if they thought only for themselves and if they wouldn’t think of the future of the country when they vote, I wore my T-shirt with a quote by Conrado de Quiros: “You don’t have national pride or a sense of country, you’ll get nowhere.” Sadly, however, I would find out that the voters were too busy to even bother to look at my T-shirt, let alone contemplate the profundity of what was written on it. To monitor the time and to see if the election would really be faster than before, I would wear a wrist watch, although I’m not used to wearing it because it annoys me.
At 8:45, I arrived at the polling precinct. Already, the entrance to the Cabantian Elementary School where I would be casting my vote was dominated by “poll assistors” (“poll assistants” would be much simpler) distributing sample ballots; vendors selling mineral water, Max and Snowbear; and teenagers and bystanders doing…nothing.
Then I went to my precinct: 1808C. Like all the other precincts, mine was already crowded. There were those who were looking for their names on the list that was pasted on wall. Some were asking for priority numbers. There were also the omnipresent “poll assistors” struggling to get inside, or at least get close to, the precinct.
I searched my name on the list to double-check if my precinct was really there. I’m glad I did, because when I found my name, it was listed under a different precinct: 1808E. But that was no matter. I was still on the right precinct. The COMELEC, I discovered, put the five precincts in one cluster. For instance, the precincts from 1808A to 1808E were put in cluster 545; hence, the overcrowded precincts.
The polling precincts were replete with posters informing the voters of the six things they need to do to cast their votes. The procedure looked good—on paper. It was not followed. I don’t know if the same procedure was followed in other places, but the actual voting procedure in Brgy. Cabantian went like this: First, the voter would fall in line to get a priority number. As for me, I started to fall in line at 8:50. I received my priority number at 10:24. After the voter got his priority number, he would again fall in another line that led to the precinct. Once the voter got inside, he would tell his precinct number to the BEI (Board of Election Inspector). If his name is on the list, the BEI would ask for his signature and thumb mark. All that took me no less than 50 minutes.
At 11:14, I had cast my vote. All in all, it took me 149 minutes (2 hours and 29 minutes) to vote. I can say that I’m lucky to have just been inconvenienced for 149 minutes. Others took one whole day just to cast their votes.
Some of you would say that 149 minutes is too much. But come to think of it, this was no ordinary day. We are talking about election here. It is the time when we choose our next leaders. It is the time when we decide not only the fate of our country but also our own fate.
If it takes only 149 minutes to choose leaders who would help our country better again; if it takes only 149 minutes to undo all that GMA did; if it takes only 149 minutes to reclaim what this country has lost; if it takes only 149 minutes to save us from another six years of felony, perfidy, and larceny—-if it takes only 149 minutes to achieve all that, then we should be more than willing to spare 149 minutes of our time.
It cannot be denied that we have this tendency to inflate our own misery. But as the man who tried to organize the disorganized voters at our polling precinct, said, “Kini na ang panahon para mag-sakripisyo lang ta gamay” (“This is the time that we have to sacrifice a little”).
