IT may take a voter an average of six minutes and one second to fill up the proposed ballot for next year’s automated elections, a recent time-and-motion study shows.
A total of 534 people of voting age participated in the study held Saturday at the San Isidro Central School, Nueva Ecija by YouthVotePhilippines, which consists of youth groups and organizations engaged in voter education.
YouthVote earlier recorded an average of eight minutes and four seconds when it did a similar study in Tanauan, Batangas.
“Proper orientation on the voting process can really help a voter fill up the ballot easier and faster,” said YouthVote lead convener Ching Jorge.
The series of study, conducted with PoliticalArena.com, uses an improvised ballot based on the sample design of the Commission on Elections.
The ballot used for the second study featured substitute questions for 32 electoral positions with 338 candidates printed on both sides of the paper. For its second round, YouthVote shortened the ballot size from 25 to 20 inches and adjusted the font size to Arial Narrow 11 on Comelec’s advice.
In an exit interview, participants of the study generally had positive feedback, according to YouthVote. Several teachers, elderly and experienced voters who participated in the study said they were relieved that voting will still be done using paper ballots. Previous Board of Election Inspectors chairpersons also expressed relief that the voting process will not be very different from past elections.
Unlike the first round, YouthVote’s second time-and-motion study was multisectoral and included out-of-school and elderly voters.
Participants were also oriented on the mechanics of filling up the ballot to avoid over-voting and shading problems, YouthVote said.
The Comelec is clustering the existing 320,415 voting precincts into 80,146 precincts to match the available 82,200 counting machines, also known as PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scan).
Each clustered precinct will have up to 1,000 registered voters and will be open for 11 hours.