EDITORIAL - Reward the early birds

The deadline for the registration of voters last October 31 was attended with the usual long lines of last-minute application filers. Many of them were young first time voters. And many of them ended up failing to meet the deadline.

This is very typical of the Filipino, who is notorious for preferring to wait until the eleventh hour before making a move. You can see this trait in many of the Filipino’s various activities.

What is sad about the voter deadline, though, is that the resulting disenfranchisement of new voters involves mostly young people, or those whom many, including their own selves, would describe as idealistic.

Well, waiting for the last minute can hardly be called idealistic. There is no idealism in squandering away precious time when more productive things can be done with greater efficiency only to get caught in the push and shove of deadline-beating.

The registration has been ongoing for years. All Comelec offices all over the country have been waiting for all these registrants to come. But they never did. They had to wait for the last minute.

Perhaps, there should be penalties for those who list up on the last few weeks of the registration period. There should be fines to be paid for bad traits that we do not want to be associated with an activity such as voting, which is the height of civic duty.

Or if it is not legally possible to penalize those who register late, maybe there should be rewards instead for those who register early. This can come in the form of priority privileges like being provided express lanes for voting.

Whatever form it may come, there should be moves done to reward those who exhibit the kind of traits that we can be proud to call Filipino. Filipinos may be notorious for always being late. Maybe it is time to change all that. Maybe we can reverse it with rewards.