WE IN the media have been glamorizing those late registrants who rushed to the registration stations on the last minute. The giant TV networks gave them ample time to air their grievance against the Commission on Elections, which had been there 365 days ago waiting for those everybody to come register.

The problem here is that the prima donnas would rather go to the Comelec in their own sweet time, which is the last hour. Unfortunately for us, time is always a fleeting and the weather is not always summer. We are always repeatedly battered by typhoons and floods, which snaps out light and power in the registration booths. But even then these nature wraths do not happen every day.

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It's really maddening for we do not only have a crowd of angry late comers who cannot be accommodated by the number of computers that are assigned in each registration place during normal times but also that the din of complaints reaches a crescendo of national shame.

The loudest to complain are teenagers who must not have heard of the words 'early' and 'promptly'. And they are the most impudent like they thought Comelec has the luxury of the time like they have.

Ironically, we flagellate the Comelec personnel and we carp about how inadequate are the provisions of the poll body.

You can fault the Comelec for so many issues but this registration is not among them. Many new registrants missed the boat because they dillydallied too long as if Comelec will be there for them for all eternity. This tragedy reflects our primal character which we broadcast worldwide. It is a shame and yet we gloat over it on TV.

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By the way, the company which won the bid for the supply of computers to be used in the first computerized elections in the Philippines has taken several steps ahead of the COMELEC by using the World Wide Web in a very comprehensible step-by-step procedure of how to vote using the computer machine. All in clear video presentation.

I came across it last night but I forgot to jot down the website. But maybe you can google it.

The instruction is in English, and I hope that they should do this in different dialects for everybody to understand. What the Comelec should do is to show this on cinema houses or come up with simple instructional fliers and distribute these in all schools and in all levels. Newspapers can carry this too gratis et amore.

In all aspects it looks like electronic voting is easier to do than texting and makes withdrawal of money from your ATM more complicated. We just hope that cry babies will no longer be complaining on national TV again.