Faster voting noted

It took voters only five minutes to cast their vote in yesterday’s barangay elections and the turnout was high.

“Compared to midterm elections, most of the people know the candidates in a barangay election. It’s a more actively-participated election,” said Cebu City south district election officer Edwin Cadungog.

In Guadalupe, incumbent barangay captain Michael Gacasan was reelected.

He beat former barangay captain Eugenio Faelnar, who is touted to be Mayor Michael Rama’s ally.

Guadalupe with over 33,000 voters is the city’s biggest barangay.

In clustered precinct no. 95 where Mayor Rama voted, Gacasan got a total of 131 votes against 71 votes for Faelnar.

Guadalupe is also the home barangay of former mayor and congressman Tomas Osmena.

In Tinago, Joel Garganera, a former councilor who campaigned with the theme “Pagbabalik nga Panday”, was elected barangay captain.

He won against the incumbent Domingo Lopez, a cousin of the mayor.

In Apas, Ramil Ayuman won another term as barangay captain.

In barangay Tejero, the entire slate of re-electionist barangay captain Jessielou Cadungog, an ally of the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan was leading the race.

The 80 barangays in Cebu City and their choice of barangay captains is leverage for the next local and national elections in 2016.

The ringing of school bells at 7 a.m. signaled the start of voting that lasted until 3 p.m.

Carmelita Costanilla, 58, of sitio Sta. Lucia in Guadalupe said it took her less than 10 minutes to vote.

Francisco Baclayon, 56, of Andres Abellana Street said it took him only five minutes to fill up his ballot.

Baclayon said he waited in line longer in the May 13 automated election.

“Sa shading mag lisud ka ug pangita sa mga pangan. Karon sayon ra kaayo pag suwat sa mga pangan (It took me more time to look for names to shade. Now, it was easy to write the names),” he said.

Mayor Rama, a Guadalupe voter was immediately accommodated when he came to his precinct 1370a with his son, Mikel, to vote.

Cebu City has 34 barangays in the south district and 46 in the north district.

There are 566, 921 voters and 1, 557 clustered precincts.

The south district has 310, 830 voters while there are 256, 091 in the north district.

Cadungog said that other than questions raised about how votes were appreciated, there were few problems during the manual count of votes last night.

The clustering of precincts was limited to two to three precincts.

This brought the number of voters to 300 to 400 per clustered precinct.

In the May elections, four to five precincts were clustered raising the total number of voters per clustered precinct to at least 1,000.