I don’t know if it’s just the eagerness to have my election virginity taken, but I think the number of campaigns that have mushroomed encouraging people to vote is the most encouraging development of this year’s elections.

From school-based YouTube virals, to celebrity-endorsed TV commercials, and even those thinly-veiled “Vote in 2010!” posters where the names of the politicians are larger than their message,
it seems that our society has been reawakened to the importance of voting. The right to vote is often the only instrument citizens have which can concretely and directly shape our government.

That being said, I am also pleased that we have heeded this call, for the most part. Many of us have gone out of our way, submitting to neither heat nor rain, to line up at our municipal halls and register to vote. The mere fact that we did, regardless of our motivations (like when your NSTP grade depends on it), signals our willingness to participate in the democratic process by exercising our right to choice. And among all the choices we can make, it is this one upon which the foundations of a democracy are laid. It is from these votes that our government derives its power.

So maybe it wouldn’t hurt if the government made the process of voting registration a little easier, right?

‘OLD. UGLY, HORRIBLY INEFFICIENT’

I mean, I agree that there is something nice about young, middle-to-upper class students like myself going out of our comfort zones to register for the elections. But while it speaks volumes of the people who went out to register, it leaves a lot to be desired on part of the administration.

Because the registration process is a lot like the current face of Philippine politics: old, ugly and horribly inefficient.

Sometimes you go to city hall at nine in the morning, and don’t leave until seven in the evening—even then, you aren’t guaranteed your turn. If you do get it, they will schedule your interview some weeks later, which means having to undergo the grueling 10 -hour wait all over again. And it doesn’t help that neither the guards nor the staff seem happy about you registering. It’s like they wished you never came.

There is also the fact that the election offices are often undermanned and under-equipped. It is not just that we don’t have enough computers; it is that the ones we already have are also out of fashion. The computer that processed my information when I registered was older than I was and ready to conk out at any given second.

Worse, the entire registration process is often dependent on these three or four computers. If they happen to malfunction, the staff will be forced to call it a day. Imagine having to miss work to line up for registration, only for a malfunctioning computer to end your day prematurely. There goes both your time and money.

Then there is the fact that the offices themselves are not very people-friendly. In Quezon City, for example, people are forced to wait in a cramped, sorry excuse for an open lot without any place to sit. The signs are often not very helpful, and the guards never seem to give your honest inquiries a straight answer. (It makes you want to smack them and tell them that it is your parents’ money paying for their salaries.)

I imagine the trouble that many of our countrymen have to go through in order to get visas from the US Embassy, and I find the registration process comparable to that ordeal, except that we are citizens of our own country.

In short, it is almost as if they didn’t want you to vote to begin with.

It seems pretty obvious as to which aspects of the process need improvements, and I am sure there are many more which I was unable to point out. What is less clear is whether they will take the initiative to change it. Our government never seems to run out of problems, money and bureaucracy being the least of them.

In fact, of all our election problems, this is probably the least. There are others such as electoral fraud, violence, and vote-buying. But I believe that it does not make the issue any less important, for a right as important as the right to vote should not only be realizable, but also easily accessible.

I believe that the voter registration process deserves a revamp because our citizens deserve an easier time in exercising the right to vote. It is not enough that citizens are taking the initiative; our government must meet them halfway and reward them for participating in the democratic process. Who knows? Maybe it’s all the incentive we need to get every single citizen to vote.

(The author is a sophomore at the Ateneo de Manila University. Visit http://james.soriano-ph.com, or mail me at james@soriano-ph.com)