The first automated elections (daw)

This is the 3rd time I have voted for the national elections. So far, my experience has always been a fast voting process. We are not talking about the more-than-a-month-long announcement of winners, okay. In the past, I arrived after lunch and I finish within 30 minutes max. This with no preparation at all - no checking of precint number, no list of candidates.

This time though I came prepared. After all I don't want to stay long as me and my brother needed to go somewhere. But I was sorely disappointed

So we arrived at 9:00 am in our precint at Paranaque High School. We came prepared as we already know our precint number, with a complete list of candidate to boot. Good thing our municipality already organized the precints beforehand. A mailman went to our house weeks before to inform us of our precint number.

But our wait to be able to vote took us almost 5 hours! We could not believe our eyes when they told us to fall in line.

5 precint numbers needed to squeeze into a classroom. 

We were actually a bit lucky as some of the lines were under the sweltering sun. Imagine the 12 noon sun casting its full power on these poor people. 

The line was sooooo slow. They only allowed 2 people to come in every so often. Imagine the line, and 2 people coming in every 20 minutes or so. Not to mention those who attempted to make the usual 'singit', not minding those people who were trying to shoo them away. Talk about insensitivities!

Finally, at 2:30 pm, we were able to vote. Less than 10 minutes and we were done.
No lunch, just water that sustained us all those hours. This is how we complied with our duty for being a Filipino in the country's first automated election.

I hoped the counting will be done in 48 hours as promised.