Halalan '07

Recently I feel like i haven't been doing enough for our country. Which was why I volunteered to be part of PPCRV (Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) for the May 14 elections. I got the morning shift which started at 630am 'til 1230pm. This was fine with me since I'm a morning person.

Woke up bright and early yesterday. I got to the polling place 630 on the dot. Got a bit lost since i thought the entrance was near the nursery, had to go around to get to the HS gym.

I was still a bit unsure on what to do when i got there. Sure i had a primer, but it was the first time i was doing this. I volunteered in the past for NAMFREL quick count but this is different. Due to the limited number of volunteers we only had 1 person per precinct. I was tasked to watch over 285A and B. Luckily there weren't that many voters for that precinct, nor were that many incidents.

A little after lunch Sr. Hermie came to take my place. Unfortunately she couldn't stay 'til the end of the counting. So she asked if I could come back. I was still a bit tired since I slept late Sunday night, but I said ok.

I went home, slept for about an hour then asked my brother to bring me back to Xavier. When I got there Atty. Santos asked if I could also collect the 6th copy of the electoral returns. This means I wait until all the counting was done for the precinct and get deliver the ERs to NAMFREL. So I became an instant NAMFREL volunteer, too! :)

Sadly less than 60% voted. I was a bit tearful, and a lot frustrated, when they were tearing the unused ballots in half. I kept thinking it's such a waste. But that's just me. On the bright side, since we were counting less than 200 votes, I figured it wouldn't take that long right? As usual I'm wrong. :( We locked the ballot boxes around 145am. Almost 19 hours in the polling place, x ballots, and my aching hand from all the writing.(I sincerely hope we get to implement electoral process automation) Fun part though was affixing our thumbmarks on all the ERs. All the pollwatchers were like little kids as we eagerly marked the ERs. It relieved a lot of the fatigue, woke us up, too.

I have a reinforced respect for the individuals who tally our votes. It definitely isn't easy. Kudos to all the BEIs (Board of Election Inspectors). We were lucky enough that our BEIs were friendly and helpful. They answered all our questions and had a ready smile on their faces. The other pollwatchers that i was fortunate enough to be with made my task so much easier. We all managed to keep our humor even cracking jokes while counting the ballots. Yes, i would even call it FUN :)

And this is the result of all our hard work:

My deepest gratitude to everyone who exercised their right to vote, to those who were involved with making this election possible and successful, and for being given this opportunity to serve.

To those who weren't able to vote, there's still the next elections. See you all in 3 years. :)