WITH all Saints' and All Souls' Days over, a lot of people are thinking of more mundane things nowadays. Just Wednesday morning the talk over at our table in Luisa's Café was about the elections.

Imagine if you can a poll sheet twice as long as your arm. That's twice as long as your arm and this sheet only contain the candidates for the national candidates. If you add the local elective positions, you can get a poll sheet twice as long again.

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That's the new scenario these days because of the poll automation to be implemented by the Commission on Elections come May 2010.

Okay to put you to speed, the Comelec will come out with a list of all the candidates in one sheet, for each voter. All the voter has to do is to shade the box opposite the name of the candidate you want to vote for. You bring your filled up sheet, present it to the BEI (that's the Board of Election Inspectors - yeah the teachers) and its members will assist you in placing the long sheet into the slot of the computer, which will then read your choices automatically.
And that's that.

Your votes are counted and 30 minutes after the final vote is cast a print out can be had of the complete count of all votes cast and the winning candidates, of your precinct anyway.

Fast, efficient and totally sterile from human intervention. Perfect?

On one hand, this new system will definitely lessen the cost of candidates. In the past each and every candidate has to field at least three poll watchers for every precinct.

Under the new system the candidate need not field that many saving him or her the cost of feeding and paying for the labors of these people.

Great really. It makes running for office more affordable especially for those who have the willingness, eagerness and capability to run. No longer will they have to think about the extra cost of seeking an elective post.

Everything is automated no voter need spend more than 30 minutes inside the polling station - assuming you already have a list of those you want elected. Even BEIs and poll watchers need not spend an entire night and a half before they can know who won and who lost.

Saves more than money, saves time too.

Great!

Anyway, the greatest fear most voters have about the poll automation system is that it is so computerized no one can be 100 percent sure the ones they voted for will come out in the tally.

My tablemate at Luisa's put is so succinctly: "Paano kung preprogrammed na yung winners?" Only a Filipino will think of such possibility, and yet it sounds so logical, it can't be discarded. What if the winners are already in the computer before the elections even started? Because the process is so sanitized, you can never be sure of anything.

Well, November is the month when the Comelec promised to educate voters on how the new system works. Hopefully, the Comelec will also be able to quell this very primal fear on poll automation.