HONG KONG—SEN. MANUEL VILLAR, THE NAcionalista Party presidential candidate and his running mate Sen. Loren Legarda, got the very first votes cast in the automated elections system being road-tested in Hong Kong and Singapore at the start of the absentee overseas voting for the 2010 elections Saturday.
The computerized balloting in Singapore and Hong Kong will serve as a test and model for the nationwide electronic elections in the Philippines on May 10.
But the results of the absentee overseas voting will not be known until after May 10 as the overseas votes will be tallied simultaneously with those in the Philippines.
Absentee voting was off to an orderly if slow start in the two cities, which hosts hundreds of thousands of overseas Filipino voters, despite the novelty of the new automated voting system.
Rowena de la Cruz, who had camped out at the Bayanihan Center in Kennedytown, Hong Kong, since Friday afternoon, was the first to insert her machine-readable ballot into a precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine.
First in line
De la Cruz, a member of the Gabriela women’s party-list group, said she voted for Villar and his running mate, Loren Legarda. She also voted for party-list members Liza Maza of Gabriela and Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna, who are both running for senator as guest candidates of the NP.
In the 2007 elections, De la Cruz was also first in the queue. “Even though I’m a migrant, I’m happy that I was able to vote,” she said.
The first voter in Singapore was Lydia Deligente, who commented that the new system was much easier than the manual mode that she used in the 2004 elections. Voters in Singapore started arriving at the precincts as early as 5 a.m., the Department of Foreign Affairs said.
Trending concerns
De la Cruz’s disclosure to the media of her vote for Villar raised a concern for the Comelec that the overseas absentee voting results could be used for trending.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said the Comelec would not prevent anyone from asking people who they had voted for, and would not stop people from disclosing that.
But the poll body would look for ways to prevent the appearance of trending based on the monthlong overseas absentee voting, he said.
“It’s very important for us that the elections here in the Philippines will not be perceived as having been influenced by any outside factor such as trending or a bandwagon that will be generated by the overseas absentee voting,” he said.
He said the poll body was looking into the issue and would see what it can do to minimize the possibility of trending and a bandwagon effect coming out of the overseas voting process.
But Jimenez said the disclosure of the first Hong Kong voter’s vote does not mean there was trending. He acknowledged that the matter was “newsworthy.”
“As far as the first voter is concerned, that’s done. It’s out there already. We’ll see what we can do over the next few days just to prevent the appearance of trending,” he said.
For Bro. Eddie, Noy
As the day wore on, voters professing support for other presidential candidates began arriving at the precincts. In Hong Kong, groups of women said they were voting for Bangon Pilipinas candidate Bro. Eddie Villanueva.
Couple Aimee and Arnold de la Luna entered the Hong Kong polling precinct wearing jackets imprinted with the yellow ribbon insignia of the campaign of the Liberal Party’s Sen. Benigno Aquino III.
The couple said they were voting for Aquino because of his reformist and anticorruption stance. “We believe that he is the most qualified of the aspirants,” they said.
They said they support Aquino by explaining his platform to their coworkers, the first time that they have openly backed a candidate.
Supporters of various candidates and party-list groups could be seen distributing flyers outside the Bayanihan Center in Hong Kong.
20 precincts in HK
There are about 589,000 registered Filipino voters worldwide; 96,000 are in Hong Kong, while 31,000 are in Singapore.
There are 20 precincts at the Hong Kong Bayanihan Center and seven precincts in the Philippine Embassy in Singapore for the monthlong voting process.
In all other countries, registered migrant voters will either personally cast their ballots at the nearest embassy or accomplish and mail the ballot packets that have been sent them.
In the North Pacific, the first one to cast his vote was Noel M. Reyes, a 36-year-old physics teacher at Palau High School in Koror, Palau. Wearing a white t-shirt emblazoned with, “Ako Ang Simula” (I Am the First), Reyes arrived at the embassy in Koror at 6:45 a.m. and cast his vote when the embassy opened the polling at 7 a.m., according to an embassy report to the DFA.
Painless process
The voters who tried out the PCOS for the first time in Hong Kong found the new voting process to be quite easy. De la Cruz said it took her a few minutes to make her choices. “As long as you can read, it’s easy,” she said.
The process was painless for the first-day voters in Hong Kong as there were practically no queues.
The real test of the machines and the process will happen today, Sunday, when hundreds of voters are expected to flood the Bayanihan Center in Hong Kong and the Philippine Embassy in Singapore, officials said.
On entering the polling place, voters inquired about their registration status at a desk. They were then given a slip of paper showing their precinct and room assignment.
In Singapore, the voters were sent to a holding area while their status was being verified. While they waited, they were shown a video detailing the voting do’s and don’t’s of the new electronic system.
In both cities, the special board of election inspectors (SBEI) instructed voters on how to use the ballot and the machine before handing them their ballots.
No glitches
Cesar Flores, president of Smartmatic Asia, the provider of the PCOS equipment and the automated election system, said that so far voting has been going on in the two sites without a glitch as PCOS machines were “running well.”
Reports from Comelec officials in Hong Kong and Singapore said voting was slow but smooth in the precincts.
Comelec Commissioner Armando Velasco, chair of the overseas absentee voting committee who was in Singapore yesterday, said no glitches were experienced with the PCOS machines in the seven precincts in the Philippine embassy there.
“So far, it’s orderly. There are no major difficulties that we did not foresee,” said Claro Cristobal, the Hong Kong consul-general.
The only complaints from Hong Kong came from a couple of registered voters who did not see their names on the computerized voters’ list.
As of 3 p.m. Saturday, 775 voters had cast their votes in Hong Kong. Only one vote was rejected by the machine, according to Daphne Kuok, a volunteer member of the special board of election inspectors.
Excitement factor
Velasco said 184 Filipinos were able to vote in Singapore as of 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Cristobal said he was “very pleased” with the first-day turnout which was “more than the number we expected.” He initially estimated a turnout of less than 50.
“There’s the excitement factor,” he said, noting that voters were excited to try out the new automated system.
Henrietta de Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the Comelec’s citizens’ arm, who attended the first day of voting in Hong Kong, said she was impressed with the orderly process at the Bayanihan Center.
She expressed the hope that the smooth queues would be replicated in the Philippines on May 10.
Velasco noted that not many overseas Filipinos were able to vote yesterday as they all work on Saturdays.
Results recorded daily
The voting for overseas Filipinos will end on May 10. During the month-long voting period, the PCOS machines will remain at the polling places.
At the end of the day, the machines will print out an initial election return, which will be recorded every day by the SBEIs until May 10. The PCOS machines will then be locked and sealed in the presence of poll watchers.
Before the start of the voting period each day, the SBEIs will print a document to show that no changes were made in the data inside the machines during the night.
Embassy officials said the polling place is also monitored by closed-circuit television cameras.
The SBEIs will only tally the votes after the voting ends on May 10. It will be synchronized with the counting and canvassing of the votes in the Philippines on May 10. After announcing the precinct results, the SBEIs will transmit the results to the National Board of Canvassers at the Comelec. Copies will also be sent to other servers.
OFWs tech-savvy
The length of the ballot and the hundreds of names in it did not seem to slow down voters in Hong Kong who filled out their ballots in one-and-a-half minutes, said Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez.
This was much faster than the five-minute average of the participants in the various field tests conducted in Manila, Jimenez noted.
“It has been very easy for overseas voters,” Jimenez told reporters. He attributed this to Filipinos overseas being skilled and familiar with new technologies and the process of filling out forms.
“These are OFWs. Some of them are pretty skilled. They have a high appreciation for new technology. Our OFWs are more exposed to these new things so it’s not surprising that the fill-up rate is faster. They are used to forms, used to filling out standardized forms,” he said.
