Malilong: Campaign period

THE campaign period begins today. Really.

I wonder if it makes any difference. The candidates have been campaigning since the day they decided that they have been called to be chosen. Their so-called infomercials have cluttered the air lanes for as long as I can remember and they’re as subtle as a chainsaw. And they have been engaged in all forms of campaign gimmickry, mostly cheap, worn-out and asinine but presumably good enough to win a few loyalties.

But the Commission on Election says it’s all right; they are not campaigning because the campaign season hasn’t opened yet. So be it.

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So what difference does the official season of campaigning make?

I can think of only one. It means that starting today, every empty space will be plastered with campaign posters. The Comelec will, of course, make a feeble attempt at enforcing the law on the size and location of posters but that’s it: feeble.

No wonder I feel this gnawing fear every time the word “automation” is mentioned. They used to say we were going to have a fully automated election in 2010; then they announced that only the counting, transmission and canvassing will be automated.

I tried the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine once and wrote about it. It rejected the “ballot” when I inserted it. It was only during the second try, when I had ample help from the machine supplier’s man that the PCOS accepted the “ballot” and presumably counted my vote.

When the supplier’s man said that a voter can only try inserting his ballot in the machine twice, I was not worried. Then, it occurred to me that we are called on to entrust our sacred right of suffrage to a machine that could malfunction and could not even offer an explanation.

Imagine you’re in a room with ten voters, with about 989 more waiting outside for their turn (the maximum limit in a clustered precinct is 1,000). After you have shaded the appropriate spaces in your ballot, you insert it in the machine.

The PCOS inexplicably rejects it and then rejects it again on the second try, effectively disenfranchising you.

What can you do? Tear up your ballot? It’s useless anyway. Make a scene? The 990 others outside the polling booth will lynch you for delaying lunch. Impossible? The ballot that I inserted during the test run was pre-filled up. All I did was feed it to the PCOS but the machine spat it out. I was not told why, except that the machine was sensitive. Sensitive to what?

My fears are growing every day and it does not help that the body entrusted to administer the elections cannot even decide what is premature campaigning.