In Barangay Zone 1, Sainath said there was no privacy for voters inside the polling precincts. She said she saw a Board of Election Inspector (BEI), instead of a voter, feeding the ballots into the PCOS machine. Although the BEI didn’t read the ballots, the BEI could very well have done so before inserting it to the machine.
The PCOS machine was also placed beside an open window so anybody outside could peer in to take a look.
“I could completely see who everyone was voting for,” she said.
Morton also observed BEIs putting two ballots inside a single folder and a particular BEI reading ballots — front and back — before putting them in the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine. She said some names of people already dead were still in the voter’s list.
FAILING TECHNOLOGY. Both the original and backup memory cards for one of the PCOS machines in Coronon Elementary School, Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur were defective. Three of the five machines in the school failed. (contributed photo)
Morton also saw some families whose names could not be found by either the BEI or by people from the Commission on Elections (Comelec). She said three of the five PCOS machines in the Coronon school had problems.
Sainath said partylist groups whose candidates the military vilified should ask the Comelec to declare the elections a failure.
She said police intimidation also occurred in African-American communities in the US during the last presidential elections but because of the victory of Barrack Obama, the cases were largely ignored. “They would spread rumors that the police will be checking identification cards to discourage people to vote even though utility bills are actually enough to allow people to vote,” she said.
“It was inspiring how excited people were to vote,” she said of the voters in Santa Cruz. “They waited for a long time and didn’t eat and they had their children with them,” observed Sainath, who works for one of the largest and oldest civil rights and employment law firms in the US.
Some military personnel were also seen just outside the school premises in the morning of May 10.
Lindsey Kerr, coordinator of the USA-Philippines Ecumenical Advocacy Network, saw one soldier smoking by a truck parked some seven meters away from the polling place and another soldier walking towards the precinct. She said they hid behind the truck when they saw her and in less than five minutes later, they left.
“I can’t say how the voters felt but I can say for sure that if I was a poor Filipino citizen who was used to violence and the harassment and disappearances of progressive individuals, I would be worried that the soldiers would see who I was voting for,” Kerr said.
WHOSE VOTE? International observers note that the girl in the pink, who serves as poll watcher for one of the political parties, fills out a voter’s ballot. (contributed photo)
Soldiers in two military vans distributed flyers telling people not to vote for the partylist groups Act-Teachers, Akap Bata, Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, Courage, Gabriela, Kabataan and Katribu on the eve of the elections. The flyers called these groups as ‘partylists of the NPAs (New People’s Army).
PIOM would consolidate the reports of the delegations from the nine regions in the country to publish it when the delegates get back to their respective countries, hoping that in doing so, they can influence the democratic processes in the future. As an American, Sainath said she would personally speak out to convince the US government not to release the US aid to the Philippines unless these election concerns are addressed.
The nine PIOM delegates in Davao came from the USA, Canada, and Hongkong and were in Mindanao for the first time. (CJ Kuizon/davaotoday.com)
