Philippine elections...

thank God cameras are allowed

So election day is finally here. I woke up at 5 am so I could vote early... well at least that was the original plan. Problem was I didn't know how to get to my polling place at the Bel-Air basketball court. Good thing my friend Wacks, who lives nearby, took pity on me and drove me there after lunch.

voters ready to vote

It took me more than 5 hours just to register last October so not voting is out of the question, even if I line up for another 5 hours to vote, I'd do it. Disenfranchisement is not for me. My friend Yumi waited more than 2 hours to vote in her Quezon City precinct, so I was ready with bottled water, sandwiches, candies just in case.

no lines at our cluster

When I got there at 1:30 pm though, there were still a lot of people queuing up, but in clustered group no. 51 where I was listed, they were much more efficient in checking the voters' identification, fingerprinting and feeding the ballot to the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine. It just took us 5-15 minutes to do the whole thing.

great job, guys!

I was frankly shocked. Here I was, gearing up for a long wait and I was done in 15 minutes (I could have finished in 5 minutes but I just had to take pictures of the ballot, lol). Excuse me, is this the Philippines? Wow, kudos to the board of elections inspectors (BEI) of cluster 51--Supervisor Dean Co, Miss Grace, Janice and Peng--you rocked!

Bel-Air Basketball Court
Solar St. cor. Hydra St., Bel-Air Village Makati City
(take Paseo de Roxas, past Gil Puyat go straight, go inside Bel-Air Village down 2 streets and you're there)