Automation, Exit Polls and That Ubiquitous Dirty Finger

In Freakonomics it was said that voting is inefficient i.e. the amount of time, money, and effort you put in voting is not commensurate to the actual effect your voting will have as to the result of the election. Voting,therefore; is an inefficient exercise. Be that as it may, I still braved the NLEX traffic and traveled 4 hours of traffic to go home - via the SCTEX no less - to my hometown Alaminos, Pangasinan.

Alarm clock rang at 6:30am...way too early to wake up on a holiday. Of course it's not just any holiday but election day - the day I am finally going to meet the talk of the town Mr. PCOS machine. At 8am we were already at the polling place, techno-savvy that I am I already wrote the precinct number which I got on comelec.gov's website Precinct 0022A. Armed with my written list of names of candidates I am going to vote for and our precinct number committed to memory my mom and I looked for precinct 22A. After one round of searching for precinct 22A we still couldn't find it -- only precincts 1-9 exists. I know I am bad at math, hence I went to law, but 22 and 9 is way too far even if there's some mysterious odd, even, prime numbers only scheme going on! So, we swallowed our pride, and approached those PPCRV volunteers. We gave our precinct number 0022A and voila we got the answer - no algorithms required - apparently the one posted online is our OLD precinct number before the clustering happened, and we are now on precinct/cluster no. 6! Wow, thank you Comelec for wasting our time and for getting us to sweat a tub of water! So precinct found, next goal -- find your number. Okay, thank you so much for another goal to hurdle. So going back again to the PPCRV people, who searched in the excel sheet our number 123, and 124. So all set...

 Five minutes after we found our precinct, the next step getting a number to vote and queuing for what seemed like an audition lane to wowowee! My mom, though a senior citizen in denial, opted to take advantage of the senior citizen lane so okay, i just had to pep talk myself and sing Britney Spears 'Stronger' while waiting. After like an hour of waiting I finally was able to vote. Finally!


Secretly, i was humming 'may bilog, may bilog na hugis itlog...' lest I over or undershade. So after being handed down what looks like a 3 feet of paper (yes, we have that many candidates!) and handed the smartmatic marker I took one of the seat. Since we were voting in an elementary school, the seats were of course for the size of elementary students. So hurdle number five: how to fit a 3 feet paper, cover it with a 12 inch folder while all the time trying hard to fit yourself on a desk that was a nice fit when you were 1 foot shorter and 30 lbs lighter. I somehow managed to do this, however; so on to hurdle number 6: making sure not to over or undershade.

Shading is difficult, hands-down. Maybe I am just obsessive-compulsive but trying to be within the oval - the bilog na hugis itlog - is one hard feat! Since I voted early, the marker was still full and some of my shadings went through at the back of the paper. I was for a while, nervous that the PCOS machine would not accept it. Fortunately it did! What I thought would be the clincher round - getting the machine to accept it - proved to be a breeze. One go and the machine said: Congratulations Your Vote has now been registered.



Now, on to putting your thumbmark and getting the dirty finger i.e. the indelible ink. So voting finally done, time for some Halo-Halo! So while my mom and I were having snacks in the canteen near the school, I saw this two ladies wearing SWS exit poll IDs. I immediately called them for me to be surveyed. They only asked for who we voted for from President to Senatorial race, no question was asked on party lists which is OK.

I finally proved that this exit polls exists. Now on to the questions. After being asked who we voted for - I voted for Gordon while my mom voted for Gibo - some follow up questions we're asked. Some of the questions asked were:
1) Your choice for president is based on:
- platform (plataporma)
- pagkatao (personality?)

I answered, plataporma. When it was my mom's turn she asked, can i answer both? The interviewer said that she can only choose one, so she chose pagkatao. Now looking back, in choosing a president it's difficult to say you're just basing your decision on his/her platform after all you also look at that presidentiables personality, that is, his capacity to actually implement his platform. Thus, it's not clearcut and to box a respondent's answer in an either or choice would not be reflective of his/her motivation for choosing such candidate.

2) What do you think will be the future of the Philippine Economy (not so sure if it was worded as such)?
- bubuti (better)
- pareho pa din (same)
- sasama (will worsen).

This is very vague and ambiguous, so I had to clarify if my answer will be based on my perception what the economy will be on the basis of who I think will win or on the basis of who I voted for, or on the basis simply of ALL market factors. The interviewer said its the former -- based on who I think will win. I said, it will worsen*.

One day post election, and the clear winner is emerging...i stick with my answer. June 30, we're on to the final and longest round.


*this is my perception, and I don't wish to explain it. I call it positive pessimism - you don't frustrate yourself when you didn't expect much to begin with.


According to this article SWS won't accept voters who volunteered to be interviewed...Oooopppsss. :)