Bought Vote

While we may be lulled into concluding that the first automated elections in the country was largely successful because of the amazingly swift results, these latest elections, however, have shown that with the massive incidences of vote buying, technology can only do so much to ensure and facilitate the credible, honest, and peaceful democratic exercise of the people's sovereignty.

Thus, while there was an acknowledged improvement in the conduct and the security of the casting of the votes themselves, the polls remained vulnerable to what is arguably the most basic form of cheating: vote buying.

In Bikol, reports from the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Army have indicated widespread vote-buying in the provinces of Albay, Catanduanes, and Camarines Sur. In one incident, leaders or "operators" for a re-electionist board member in Catanduanes were apprehended with bundles of Php 500 bills amounting to Php 1.246 Million. Together with the cash bundles were wallet-sized calendars of a gubernatorial candidate of the province.

In Pio Duran, Albay, groups of "operators" were also apprehended by authorities in two occasions. The said operators had cash stapled to sample ballots as well as a list of registered voters in the area.

In Camarines Sur, complaints have reached the PNP Provincial Office that in the town of Magarao, pedicab drivers were ordered by operators of a mayoralty candidate to proceed to the candidate's house on the day of elections where they will be given Php 1000 each in exchange for not voting anymore. Reportedly, the pedicab drivers received the cash and had their fingers marked by an indelible ink to prevent them from actually voting.

Meanwhile, sources revealed that rampant vote-buying had occurred also in the town of Baao wherein a mayoralty candidate's operators went around distributing cash in exchange for the "straight-voting" for the said candidate's municipal line-up.

Lamentably, these incidents point to problems which had beset the election process: the lack of a mature electorate resistant to such fraudulent means. Voter maturity, we have to acknowledge, requires not only education and formation programs; it requires that basic needs of the voter be met too. For when people's votes can be bought by a few hundred pesos, this only shows how dire and desperate their conditions are. And no advances in automated voting technology can address that.