Election Day
Casting a ballot
Today, November 4, 2008, is an historic day in the United States of America. Very possibly, if we are to believe all the surveys and polls, Americans may vote into office their very first African-American President. There is buzz all around that voter turnout will be high–which is always good–because Americans realize the importance of this vote and the effect of the elected person will have on their future as a nation and as a people.
One thing that always amazes me, apart from the democratic process itself, is how quick the results are known. In a matter of hours, barring any close calls like 2000, a president-elect is known and announced. I guess this is one of those instances wherein technology is properly and efficiently used.
In the Philippines, it usually takes weeks, sometimes months, to finish counting all the ballots cast for a national election. A lot of efforts have been made to computerize the counting process in order to greatly speed up the process, but up until now the process remains manual. Yes, teachers counting the votes by hand and the returns added up from the municipal level all the way to the national level. Why, you wonder? Because the procurement process, as is so often the case in third world government, is so rigged with graft and corruption that the eventual winner of the bidding process has the most subpar and defective solution. And government will find this out after pilots have been done and millions of pesos have been spent testing the system–essentially putting to waste all the money and energy spent.
Another possible reason for the continued manual process is so that political parties (more specifically the ruling political party) will find it easier to manipulate the results in their favor. Some years back, during presidential elections in the Philippines, allegations of “dagdag-bawas” (”add-subtract”) were rampant. The concept was very simple but very effective: votes were “subtracted” from your opponent and “added” to yours. You got more votes while your opponent got less, and the total number of votes doesn’t change–making it appear on the surface that no manipulations have been done. Like I said, so simple yet so effective.
Who knows, maybe next election we’ll have a new computerized counting system. Either that, or a new way of moving around votes. 
