2010 Philippine National Elections : Null Votes

It's now the 2^nd week of June and we are nearing the end of the term of the current administration here in the Philippines on June 30, 2010. The first ever automated election in the Philippines was held last May 10, 2010 and as expected there are lots of speculations, complaints and controversies.

The official counting for the presidential and vice-presidential race was most likely finished yesterday. However, there are many people that are quite confused and concerned about the 2 or more million null votes which could turn the tide of the current trending of votes. This was all over the news on Philippine local channels.

This is also due to the fact that the vice-presidential race is too close and those 2 million and more null votes could dictate who the actual winner is. Based from the news, the Commission on Elections will not be counting them and it has probably enraged a lot of people especially the supporters of several candidates.

Well, I am not a hundred percent sure why these votes were counted as null votes. They probably are so because of the automation of elections. The instructions was to completely fill out the circle beside the candidate you want to vote for and if there's a mistake the vote will probably be nullified or even the entire ballot.

We really can't expect everyone to do it based on what we expect. Some people may have made mistakes in the way they voted but again, as me and my sister pointed out, there is an intention to vote and in the Philippines, the people have the right to vote.

In my opinion, if these votes were nullified due to technicality by the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machine, it somehow suppresses the person's right to vote for his/her candidate and for his/her vote to be counted officially.

A machine can't think. If we manually count the votes from the ballots, the person who counts them would probably have thought to him/herself, "Hey this person made a mistake but it is clear that he/she shaded this circle. It may not be completely shaded but it is shaded and this most certainly is his/her intended vote." It would most likely have been counted if it was reviewed by a panel of election officers.

So if you'll ask me, I would like to have every ballot accounted for. However, it's probably too late and it will take way longer to do a manual ballot count. I just feel bad that those votes weren't counted and the results would probably be different from what we are seeing right now. It can still go either way for a few of the candidates on the national level.