The homestretch

With less than two weeks before election day, can voter preferences still change?

Candidates trailing in the surveys like to stress that a week is a long time in Philippine politics.

They also question the accuracy of surveys in the time of COVID. Even certain pollsters have admitted that their sampling failed to include socioeconomic classes A, B, and possibly a significant segment of class C living in private gated subdivisions where people refuse to participate in face-to-face interviews amid the pandemic.

This could partly explain the dissonance between those mammoth crowds at rallies for Vice President Leni Robredo and her survey numbers.

So Sen. Panfilo Lacson and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, much maligned following their infamous Easter Sunday press conference, have a point in saying that the only true gauge of voter preferences is the election itself.

Survey frontrunners Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and running mate Sara Duterte-Carpio also have the right attitude in saying that they will be running scared until all the votes have been counted.

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In the meantime, attention is also focused on ensuring that the vote will be orderly and credible.

This week I checked my name in the online precinct finder of the Commission on Elections and got the information I needed plus Comelec confirmation of my active voting status. The process took about a minute.

But someone I know learned that she had been deactivated as a voter. She was studying in the UK in 2019 and did not vote, but she cast her ballot in the 2016 polls. So she was puzzled by the deactivation, which happens when one fails to vote in two successive elections.

Last Monday, the Comelec, apparently receiving similar complaints, explained that elections for the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan or youth council were held in 2018.

So those who did not vote in 2018 and 2019 cannot vote on May 9, and will have to register again after the current election period is over.

There are complaints that this wasn’t sufficiently emphasized when the Comelec was carrying out the voter registration program last year, which was disrupted by the deadly Delta-driven COVID surge.

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The Comelec has been trying to allay concerns expressed by election watchdogs and the camps of some presidential candidates about opportunities for poll fraud.

It has stressed that the latest mess related to data breach involving its vote counting machine (VCM) provider Smartmatic will not affect the May 9 elections.

When the precinct count optical scan or PCOS machines were newly arrived and being put through the paces for the first fully automated general elections in our country, I sat through a detailed technical briefing and hands-on demonstration for the media conducted by the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM.

Being no techie, I brought along with me The STAR’s information and communications technology supervisor. At the end of the session, all I clearly understood was how to properly fill out the ballot and slip it into the PCOS machine without the paper being rejected.

But our ICT guy reassured me that the technical explanations about the system being tamper-proof were pretty solid.

His assessment, plus the fact that the Comelec at the time was chaired by the respected retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Melo, made me believe that our foray into 100 percent automated voting would work.

When I told Melo that I wasn’t tech-savvy enough to competently pass judgment on the reliability of the PCOS system, he grinned and told me, “Trust the machine.”

That election day 2010, Melo memorably announced, just a few hours after the polling centers closed, that there was a winner in the presidential race: Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III.

Members of Congress sniffed that the winner still had to be formally proclaimed by the legislature. But Aquino’s landslide win was confirmed by the official Comelec count and the snail-paced congressional canvass.

As far as I can remember, there were no accusations of cheating from second placer Joseph Estrada, whose eligibility to seek another term as president the lazy Supreme Court left unresolved.

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Into the homestretch of the current campaign, the Comelec also continues its efforts, even if undermined with impunity by the frontrunners, to help voters get to know the candidates.

Because of a payment controversy, the Comelec is switching from its planned town hall debates to taped interviews with the candidates for president and vice president. Having seen the helplessness of the Comelec in compelling participation in its debates, however, it’s doubtful that it can make the chronic absentees break their no-talk, no-mistake policy of campaigning (unless the interviewer is on the wanted list of the FBI).

After the previous forums and partial debates plus numerous interviews, what else do voters need to know from the candidates? We more or less already know their positions on a wide range of issues including Charter change, fighting corruption, the West Philippine Sea and divorce, and their plans for the economy and public health.

But they can still expound on their plans for education, agriculture, political and electoral reforms, judicial reforms, climate change, infrastructure development, and boosting connectivity in mass transport and telecommunications.

The Comelec can also ask them basic information that aren’t required in their certificate of candidacy. Their net worth and sources of income, for example, as well as those of their spouses. Their general state of health, including comorbidities. The jobs of their adult children. Relatives in government, up to the second degree by blood or marriage.

These are valid questions to ask of those seeking the nation’s highest post.

If current developments are left unchecked, opaqueness would be institutionalized among those applying for elective office.

Only the actual vote will show if this will matter. Filipinos have two more weeks to make informed choices.