Automated Election

I went home to our province just to experience the automated election. Even if I will spend for the fare and spend only for a night in the province, I am still willing just to experience this first ever automated election in the Philippines. On the day of the election, I went to the precinct around nine in the morning. In the cluster where I belong was composed of six precincts with a total number of almost one thousand voters in one PCOS machine. At first, there was a straight line of people who will vote in the precinct. After hours of falling in line, voters in our precinct converge towards the door that we already cramped on the waiting area. I pitied the elders who also fall in line and were already exhausted for the long hours of waiting just for them to cast their vote. I am also disappointed to the voters who waited for hours and in the middle of waiting give up and opted to go home rather than vote. As for me, I waited and endured the cramped up of people just to exercise my right to vote. After three hours of waiting I was able to get inside the voting room. As requested by my former teacher, I assisted one voter who cannot read. I read to him the list of candidates, ask him who he wants to vote, shade the oval for him and gave the ballot to him so that he could feed it to the PCOS machine. After giving assistance, it was already my time to vote. I signed and put my thumb mark on the required documents and my ballot was given. I had been very careful on shading the oval. After completing to fill up the ballot I feed it to the PCOS machine. At first the machine rejected it and on the second tries the machine pop out the “Congratulations” message. I was relieved. This is my experience of the automated election.