Election Aftermath

As usual majority of the candidates in the last May 10, 2010 election did not try to be earth friendly when campaigning. And same as past election, the Philippines is littered with election paraphernalia after the election. The big burdened lies again to our poor street cleaners.

But there is one change that is very positive. The Philippines held their first automated election. During the manual counting of votes, the counting usually takes months before the winner will be proclaimed but due to the automation the counting of votes only took weeks. This not only help speed up the election and lessened the burdened of election personnel, it also help reduce the carbon emission. The automated election make the counting in the Precinct level finish in just one day, this save a lot of electricity being used during the counting of the vote. And since the results of the counting is being transmitted electronically to municipal and provincial board of canvasser, no need to use a lot of gasoline powered vehicle to ferry the ballot boxes and election returns. This save a lot in transportation cost for election personnel, watchers and candidates.

I hope this is the start of the improvement of Philippines ' election. There are still some minor glitches but this maybe because it is the first time we automate the election. I hope that we will learn from our mistake and those glitches that give us a little delay in voting will no longer be there on the next election. I also heard that the Commission of Election will penalize those candidates that put their campaign poster in the non-designated poster area. Though their intention is not to avoid pollution due to non-biodegradable materials being used as election paraphernalia, this will at least discourage future candidates to use that kind of materials. I also noticed that there are already some Filipinos who volunteered in the cleaning, what amazing is that all the campaign materials they were able to collect will be recycled and their intention for helping is to clean the environment.