Voters' education trims down filling up of ballot to 6 minutes – group

DAVAO CITY – A monitoring conducted by the election advocacy group, YouthVote Philippines, said repeated voter education has familiarized Filipino voters with the automated process, trimming down to six minutes the length of stay of a voter in the polling precinct.

The YouthVotePhilippines said that its second round time-and-motion study on filling up the ballot held October 24-25 in San Isidro Central School, Nueva Ecija showed that education campaign by various groups helped voters to rummage through the new technology introduced by the Commission on Elections for the 2010 Presidential elections.

“Results of the recent study show that, on average, it may take a voter six minutes and one second to fill up the proposed ballot for the automated elections,” the group said, adding that this was an improvement from the average in the first study conducted in Tanauan, Batangas, which recorded an average of eight minutes and four seconds.

It said that it conducted the two studies with PoliticalArena.com, a socio-political networking site. The group said that it used an improvised ballot based on the sample design of the Comelec, and in the second study, the ballot featured substitute questions for 32 electoral positions with 338 candidates printed on both sides of the paper.

For its second round, the YouthVote Philippines also shortened the ballot size from 25 to 20 inches and “adjusted the font size to Arial Narrow 11 also as per Comelec advice”.

“Proper orientation on the voting process can really help a voter fill up the ballot easier and faster,” said Ching Jorge, lead convener of the YouthVote Philippines in an internet posting. “The result is a welcome development and we’re gearing our voter education program to not only get people informed about the candidates but to also familiarize them with the ballot and the new process.”

The group said that an exit interview it alsoconducted among participants of the study indicated positive feedback. “Several teachers, elderly and experienced voters, who participated in the study, said they were relieved that voting will still be done using paper ballots, as they were afraid that automated elections meant computerized voting”.

“Previous Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) chairpersons also expressed relief that the voting process will not be very different from past elections. A 74-year old voter said he was thankful the youth were initiating change. A total of 534 people of voting age participated in the study,” the group further said.

“People are always wary about new processes especially for events that will impact them personally like elections. It’s important that experienced voters have seen that it is not so much changing the old process but making it more efficient,” said Jaime Garchitorena, YouthVote information technology strategist.

“What we need to do now, especially Comelec and other groups with voter education programs, is to enlighten the public on which parts of the process will be automated, which parts will be a bit different and which parts will be similar,” he said.

“As we improve the way we conduct elections, we think we should also improve the way we conduct voter education. Aside from knowing more about the candidates and developing democratic criteria, people should also now be informed on how exactly to engage the electoral process so they won’t feel indifferent,” added Tanya Hamada, YouthVote regional convener.

In the second time-and-motion study, the participants came from different sectors including the out-of-school and elderly voters. The participants were oriented on the mechanics of filling up the ballot to avoid over-voting and shading problems.

“When we released the results of the first study, some people said we got a good average time because our participants were all students who are used to shading, like when they do it during exams,” Jorge said. “But with the result of the second study, it goes to show that with proper guidance even experienced voters can easily adjust to the new process.”

The group said it launched the studies and information campaign to address “concerns regarding difficulties and delays that might be caused by the new process and clustering of precincts”. It said that the Comelec had planned “to collapse the existing 320,415 voting precincts into 80,146 clustered precincts in order to match the available 82,200 counting machines, also known as PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan)|.

“The new set up will cluster up to 1,000 registered voters in every precinct, which will be open for 11 hours,” it said.

“We thought it better to experiment and investigate instead of whining about automated elections,” said Garchitorena. “I think the youth and the public in general deserves to know the facts of this new technology and process.”

The group made its presence felt since June 2008 when it began to engage the Comelec in dialogues focused on the immediate resumption of the registration of voters