BEI stocks up on sleep, vitamins for today’s duties

A grade one teacher from Casili Elementary  School has been taking vitamins and rested last weekend to boost her energy comes election day.

Lynette Joy Hisoler, 32, a single mother, told Cebu Daily News after getting their elections materials from Mandaue City hall that she intentionally bought the vitamins to enable her to sleep longer.

And last Saturday, Hisoler said she slept most of the day, “taas-taas na jud ko ug katog na”.

(I have long hours of sleep.)

“Nagprepare jud ko para sa election, kay dili man jud ko makatulog ana kay tungod sa among pagka-Board of Election Inspector (BEI),” Hisoler added.

(I have to prepare for the elections, because I am sure we cannot sleep that day because I am a member of the BEI.)

She has to be at the City Hall at 4 a.m. to pick up the official ballots and bring it to her assigned polling precinct in the Casili Elementary School.

She added that there’s always a need for her to sleep longer prior to the election since it will make her gain focus and concentration to her election duty as BEI.

Hisoler is assigned as a third member at the precinct 60 together with her yesterday was their chairman Amormia Cabigas, 31, a grade one teacher of Casili Elementary School.

Unlike Hisoler, Cabigas didn’t have as much rest as she is busy with her masteral studies.

But Cabigas also told CDN that she is used with stress and usually copes with food.

Since the 2004 elections, Cabigas said she has been assigned as BEI. She likes more the automated elections system compared to the manual election system.

An automated election according to Cabigas is more ‘convenient’ but in her first encounter longer lines outside her assigned precinct was experienced by the voters.

But hours have passed by and they were used with the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

“Pag-una ato kay hinay kaayo ang dagan kay nabag-ohan lagi mi sa PCOS, pero nagkadugay kay nipaspas naman mi,” Cabigas said.

(At first we had difficulty since we were not used with the PCOS, but as the voting progressed, we got used to it.)

She also recalled that in manual election, their job lingers hours after the voting closes at 3 p.m. as they have to manually count and tabulate the votes and manually prepare the Election Returns (ER) and bring these documents to the canvassing center.

With the automated election system, the counting of votes and generation of ER are all done by the PCOS machine. /Jucell Marie P. Cuyos, Reporter