Elections in perspective

With an 80 percent turnout, what can one expect at the polling places? Particularly, polling places that are public buildings like schoolhouses. Overcrowding, congestion, long waiting periods, short tempers, sweating it out in this year’s searing summer heat. Electoral machines broke down right and left. Maybe the heat affected them? They may have been a small percentage in the overall number fielded but just one breakdown causes an incremental delay. In my daughter’s precinct in a gated subdivision, the machine refused to work so after a two-hour wait, they left their ballots to be inserted when the machine started to work. In my helper’s Taytay schoolhouse, the machine conked out while the crowd piled up. No technician, no replacement. Nada. After four hours’ wait she left without voting. Meanwhile, senior citizens all around left long before. Their physical condition could not endure hours of waiting.

Thank goodness in my crowded, disorderly, hot and humid polling place in Mandaluyong the machine worked. But it was a wait just the same as senior citizens were many, too many to make them go ahead of the line which would have caused the non-seniors to wait too long. So, the solution was to have two lines and let one vote alternately from each line. It was acceptable.