The first "automated" elections

Two weeks ago was election day for president, vice-president, senators, congressmen, and locally, mayor. It was the first time they used what they called “automated voting”. Each polling station had a machine that looked like a fax machine. Voters blackened in ovals next to the candidates of their choice on the ballot cards and then fed the ballot into the optical scanning machine which was supposed to count the votes and store the info on a flash card. It was then supposed to contact home via satellite with the counts every hour or so. Apparently there were numerous problems with the machines. Some had battery problems, some didn’t work at all, some were just slow and ballots had to be fed in multiple times before they were finally accepted, and there just didn't seem to be enough of them to handle the numbers of people quickly..

It seemed that the print was small for some older folk, and so some brought a grandchild with them to help them cast their vote.

One friend went at 7:30am and after multiple problems with the machine plus the slowness of the whole procedure, didn’t actually get to cast her ballot until nearly 7pm. It sounds like a lot of people gave up and went home without voting so that was frustrating.

Sounds like vote-buying was rampant too, especially by the Opponent of the Mayor. People reported being offered round trip fare if they would sign a list saying they would vote for the Opponent of the encumbant Mayor. Workers were reported as going door to door even on election day, offering up to $22 per household to vote for the Opponent. In some neighborhoods the Opponent was sponsoring roast pork parties on election day. Others whose kids had scholarships thru the gov’t (the Opponent has been a national congressman for a long time and has sponsored many scholarships) were threatened that the scholarships would be cut off if they didn’t vote for the Opponent. It was also reported that in certain precincts the ballots listed two candidates with the same last name as the encumbant Mayor. This was done in the last election as a way of splitting the vote for those who didn’t read the whole name carefully. The interesting thing is, though, that if you download the official ballot form off the national election site, there is only one candidate listed as having that last name. So when was the second name added????

Privacy isn't quite what it is in some other places. Most of the polling places were at schools. People were sitting at school desks in a classroom, several at a time filling in their ballots. A friend said that the print was so small she didn't think anybody could see what another person was filling out. But some people said that at their polling station there were people looking in the windows and they were afraid that, since they had accepted money to vote for the Opponent, those people might see if they didn't vote for the Opponent and so felt intimidated. At other polling places there were curtains at the windows and people felt secure.

The perfidy of people. A number of people reported having accepted money from a candidate but having no intention of voting for him. In a way I kind of felt sorry for some of the candidates passing out candies, t-shirts, snacks, and even cash and hearing people say oh yes, they were going to vote for them and then here comes the election and they lose big time. Then again they aren't supposed to be engaging in vote buying.

There were no reports of violence in this city – though I did hear of one guy who got so frustrated he tried to smash the voting machine. Police pulled him away and then he turned and broke a window so they hand-cuffed him and took him off somewhere. In other parts of the country there were some reports of grenades and gunfire used to scare off voters lined up.

There were daily updates on the status of the presidential candidates but it was a few days before they announced the results of the mayoral candidacy. Apparently the local election committee didn’t want to release any info until all precincts have reported. Eventually it was revealed that the Opponent garnered about 35% of the votes and the Mayor’s daughter won 65% of the vote. (The Mayor has to step down for a term because the law mandates a limit of three terms in a row. He can run again in 3 years time. So in this election he ran for vice-mayor while his daughter, who is the current vice-mayor, ran for mayor.)