By MARK JOSEPH UBALDE
FIRST-TIME voter Diana Aricheta excitedly opened the overseas absentee voting (OAV) packet she received in the mail last week. But when the 20-year-old Los Angeles, California resident spread the contents of the envelope on the table, confusion set in.
The packet held three legal-size sheets containing the names of the party-list groups, a ballot, a paper seal, a ballot envelope and instructions in both English and Filipino.
“It would take a lot of time and patience to vote like this,” Aricheta said.
Aricheta was, in particular, disheartened by the three-page list for the party-list groups. “I only need to vote one from them,” she said.
Like Aricheta, almost 12,000 Filipinos who are registered voters in Los Angeles are voting in this year’s elections by mail or personal appearance at the Philippine embassy or consulate. More than 21,000 Filipinos in other U.S. states have also registered as new voters for the May 10 polls.
Next to Hong Kong, Filipinos in LA have the biggest number of OAV registrants for this year’s national elections, followed by expatriates and contractual workers in Dubai and Singapore.
Filipinos in Singapore and Hong Kong have been given the first crack at the country’s first-ever automated elections.
But automation is limited to just these two Asian countries. It is still manual voting for Filipino expatriates in other countries who need to write down their choices on the ballot sheet. Voting, which began on April 10, will take a month for both automated and manual overseas absentee voting.
In the mailed-ballot process, now considered outdated, the voter sends his or her ballot to the embassy or consular office by mail. It is there that representatives from the Commission on Elections will make sure that the ballot gets deposited inside the ballot box. All ballots will be counted after the voting ends on May 10 (Manila time).
OAV process a burden
But whether automated or not, the nearly three million Filipinos in the U.S. remain highly interested in the outcome of the May polls.
“Their contribution is immeasurable. Be it in ideas, ideologies, remittances, other resources—financial and otherwise,” said Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy, of the U.S.-based Filipinos. “We have the best minds in the U.S., and they would only be too happy to be of service to the country. But how?”
Sana said overseas Filipinos want to select the right leaders as their contribution to lasting reforms in the country. But the current OAV process poses a hurdle for them to exercise this right.
During the six-month OAV registration process last year, many Filipinos complained that the schedule for the face-to-face registration at the embassy and consular offices was inconvenient to Filipinos working 9 to 5.
In response, the Department of Foreign Affairs extended registration hours to weekends and even sent mobile teams to areas with a high concentration of Filipinos.
But the lack of information on the OAV process and the limited number of data-capturing machines worked against the government’s goal to register one million new overseas voters.
About 516,000 overseas Filipinos—216,000 of them new voters—are expected to participate in the elections. But both government and overseas advocacy groups fear a poor voter turnout.
One week after the monthlong absentee voting process, only 5 percent of the OAV registrants all over the globe have cast their votes.
To encourage more overseas Filipinos to vote, Sana put up the Facebook Group, “Pinoy Abroad Bumoto Tayo.” But without electoral reforms, the next elections would pose more challenges, she said.
“We need to improve the law on OAV so more people can be enfranchised,” Sana said.
Homecoming
In 2006, two years after the controversial presidential elections in the Philippines, German researchers Dr. Christl Kessler and Stefan Rother asked 1,000 Filipinos migrants about the democratic process in the country.
Most of those surveyed who were about to leave for another country said democracy was important. But a majority of the Filipino returnees said while they would participate in the elections process, they are more critical about the Philippines.
The study identified electoral fraud, corruption and threats to the rule of law as having affected the migrants’ perception of the democratic process in the Philippines.
It also found that migration changed the yardstick on which output performance is measured.
“They think the nation is run by a powerful few and they cannot do much about whoever people vote for since it does not lead to change,” the study said.
Aricheta shares this view: “Some Filipinos still care about what’s happening back there. Some could care less. They have already embraced the American life, and all they can say about the Philippines is how corrupt it is.”
But she is optimistic that the Filipinos in LA who have registered for this year’s elections will vote and usher in the changes they have been waiting for.
“I strongly believe that there will be a homecoming,” said Vivo, a Filipino-American student from New York. “It’s only a matter of time that the Philippines will see a cultural shift.”
