Election Pakapin

We have been bombarded with election trivia, fake news and garbage since January 2022. We suffered from mental and visual indigestion. We drowned in TV, newspaper, cellphones and social media election garbage. This will be my last election notes until 2025.

These were the common terms used before electronic voting machines:

1. Dead Voter. In a place controlled by a political party, their members on registration day go to cemeteries and write the names of the dead who are of voting age and register them as voters. On Election Day, their members will claim to be the voters and vote.
2. Flying Voters. Same scenario. They will vote in a barrio/town in the morning, vote in another barrio/town at noon and vote in another town/barrio in the afternoon. They are also called wak-wak, they fly from one place to another on Election Day.
3. Envelope Voting. From 1 to 4 PM, people loitering around the school gate show their fingers are clean meaning they have not voted. In the 60s, the price was 10 pesos per vote. The buyer and the seller meet behind the school house. The buyer gives the seller 5 pesos and an envelope as long as the ballot. Inside the envelope, is carbon paper faced down and below it, is a long bond paper. Inside the voter’s partition, the seller puts his ballot on top of the envelope and writes the names of the candidates. There are no smudges on the ballot because of the envelope but the writings pressed on the carbon paper will appear in the paper inside the envelope. The seller returns to the school backyard, gives the envelope to the buyer who opens it, read the writings on the paper and pay the balance of 5 pesos.
4. Stuffed ballot box. Same scenario. A day before the election, a stooge writes in all the official ballots of the precinct, the names of their candidates. In an election case, the Supreme Court said they accept the handwriting experts testimony that only one person wrote the names in all the ballots.
5. Switched ballot boxes. While the ballots are being counted and the names of the candidates are recorded, there is panic and confusion. A. All the lights are switched off; strangers steal the real ballot box and replaced it with their own box. B. Firecrackers explode, people run all over the place the real ballot box taken and replaced with a fake one. Thanks to NAMFREL and PPCRV, this did not happen last May 9.