Clean election drive relaunched

MANILA, Philippines - The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is relaunching its Clean, Honest, Accurate, Meaningful and Peaceful (CHAMP) election campaign to eliminate any doubt on the efficiency of the automated elections in 2010.

Henrietta de Villa, PPCRV chair, said they have started the recruitment of volunteers from schools and private sectors for the CHAMP program.

“By January we will already have our official list of CHAMP volunteers,” De Villa said in an interview.

De Villa noted that CHAMP volunteers would be doing voters’ education as well as manning election precincts during the May 2010 elections.

“After undergoing the necessary training on new election systems, we will be deploying two CHAMP volunteers in each polling precinct to serve as poll watchers during the elections,” De Villa noted.

De Villa said PPCRV has long been advocating for CHAMP elections in the country, but they are intensifying the advocacy for the May 2010 elections.

“We are going to implement an automated election system for the first time in the country so we have to match this with the change on how people should properly choose a candidate, so we are educating our voters with our advocacy,” De Villa pointed out.

De Villa also stressed the need to educate voters about how the new computerized election counting machines work.

Results of a survey done by Pulse Asia indicated that a majority or six out of 10 Filipinos are not aware of the automated elections.

De Villa said that proper education would make voters understand the new automated election system.

She said the PPCRV has been conducting voters’ education in various remote areas and they observed that Filipinos are afraid of the automated elections because they have not yet seen the computerized machines.

“Participants in our voters’ education campaign became excited upon personally seeing how the automated counting machines work and automatically, doubts over the new system were erased,” De Villa pointed out.

“That is why we are asking the Commission on Elections to release the training machines at the soonest possible time so we could bring it to more far flung areas and educate the voters there,” De Villa added.

De Villa said voters should know how easy it is for them to fill up their ballots and feed them in to the machines for their votes to be counted. – Mayen Jaymalin