Finally! After multiple postponements, Filipinos can now cast their votes for their chosen Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials. The last time this happened was 5 years ago for Barangay polls and 8 years ago for Sangguniang Kabataan polls.
Hours ago, polling precincts all over the Philippines were opened in around 42,000 villages to registered Filipino voters. Voting hours is scheduled from 7am and will close at exactly 3pm.
This year, there's a slight change on how voting is done particularly to voters aged 18-30 years old.
Voters aged 18-30 years old are now handed two election ballot forms, one for the barangay polls and one for the Sangguniang Kabataan polls.
Voters 15-17 are handed only the Sangguniang Kabataan ballot form, wihle voters aged 31+ are only handed ballot forms for barangay polls.
As someone who just finished casting his votes minutes ago, one problem I immediately noticed was the lack of information dissemination and assistance support from the volunteers or from the Commission of Elections.
Before going to the precinct, The most logical thing to do is to check first the COMELEC website to see what precinct you will be going to save some time there. But to my surprise, this is what greets me on their website:
Unlike the previous elections where there was an online Precinct Finder to easily find someone's precinct to vote into, this year there seems to be none. One has to call or text the numbers above and quite frankly I think those calls and texts will most likely end up being ignored or on always "busy" considering the number of registered voters in the Philippines.
I have seen many people circling and circling around classrooms just to find their name on the list provided outside the rooms. If you don't have any idea what precinct you will be, then chances are you need to manually search your name, going from rooms to rooms just so you could just cast your votes. Worst thing is that I have I even seen some old people do this and some even just gave up and decided to go home.
