Poll Watching Part 1

I was a poll watcher.

The church or, more specifically, the PPRCV ( Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting) was inviting everyone to either be volunteers or sponsors for the upcoming elections. My family and I joined as volunteers in what would be my first ever elections ( It was surprising, really, how it turned out to be a family affair. My parents joined in along with my elder sister and brother).

We had no idea what was going to happen then but it was fun actually participating in what could be a very historic event.

The work started on a Sunday afternoon. I was off to Bayanihan Elementary school to witness the testing of the PCOS machines ( The rationale behind testing these machines one day before the elections escapes me till this day). Already, there were delays in the process. The BEI (Board of Election Inspectors), although sufficiently briefed, had their moments of lapses. The testing should have started at around 2PM but we were still trying to tidy up the classroom and trying to make sense of all the election paraphernalia. When Tito Lester and I finally hauled the PCOS machine and the ballot box into the precinct, what followed was another round of checks to make sure the machine wasn't tampered with ( Those PPRCV checklists were pretty handy by the way).

Then, the voting started. We had only ten voters for the trial run but the voting session took almost an hour ( which didn't bode well come election day). Afterwards, when the excitement over the PCOS machines died down, we were off to see if the automated results coincided with the manual tallies ( It did).

By the time we were finished, it was well past 6 in the evening for a session which should have ended at around 4. By the time I got home, I was exhausted, wondering about what the next day would bring to the table.