US elections: A witness to history!

As American voters thronged to the polling precincts Tuesday evening, we attended the cocktails of the United States Embassy hosted by Deputy Chief of Missions Paul Jones at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel which kicked off the US Election Watch that they held the following morning from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at SM’s Northwing Atrium. During the reception, Jones sort of predicted what would happen after the polling precincts closed. He said that as of early afternoon Philippine time, a new President of the United States would be declared and as tradition would have it, the losing candidate would call the President-elect to concede defeat and congratulate him.

That’s exactly what happened by Wednesday noon when CNN came up with the breaking news that Sen. Barrack Obama already garnered the minimum required electoral votes to become the President-elect of the United States of America. A few hours later, we saw on live TV Sen. John McCain conceding before a throng of his supporters and offering his support to President-elect Barack Obama. Thus history has been made and we were a witness to history in the making. This is how great American democracy is!

In all the years we’ve been with The Philippine STAR and The Freeman we’ve been invited to attend an Election Watch by the US Embassy, but last Wednesday was truly a special treat because aside from giving the guests Obama or McCain campaign pins and stickers, for the first time ever, we were given a taste of actually voting for the US candidates via “mock elections” using computerized counting machines that they set up on the SM Atrium floor. I learned that the US Embassy also had this in Manila, Baguio, Bacolod, Davao and many other places in the Philippines.

There were three kinds of computerized election machines, two that needed a ballot where you either put a circle on the candidate’s name and was fed into the machine, or the “touch screen” type. Being a techie, I went for the touch screen and all I can say is that it was so amazingly simple and there was a calculator tape on a window that gave a paper trail to your electronic ballot just in case you wanted to look into a particular computer. This is why by Wednesday noon, America already had a new President in Barack Obama! No time for dagdag-bawas there.

I tell you, it was indeed a great experience to behold and I can only hope and pray that for the 2010 presidential elections, our Commission on Elections (Comelec) would be ready with their computerized system so that Filipinos can be given assurances of clean and honest elections, something that we’ve been missing since we were given Independence in 1946. I told Rep. Raul del Mar about this, and he assured me that the Comelec would be computerized for the 2010 elections. Let me point out that I have no confidence in the Comelec because they really have proven to be so inefficient in all the elections I have ever seen.

But I will give them the benefit of the doubt… that if they are truly ready to have computerized elections, then I suggest that a year before the May 2010 elections, they set up sample machines in all the city and town halls, shopping malls or churches so that Filipino voters would get their first taste of computerized elections. As I’ve said before, Filipinos are amazed by American democracy in action, but we must learn from their system and bring it here to make our democracy work.

Last Wednesday was also a historic day of sorts for Cable Network News (CNN) because they also came up with a technological first, where they brought their star reporter Jessica Yellin inside a tent in Chicago where a video shot of her was taken by 35 High-Definition (HD) TV cameras and beamed via hologram to the CNN Election Center in Atlanta to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. It really looked like what we saw years ago in the Star Wars movies where Princess Leia was beamed via hologram. With this technology, someday you will see my talkshow Straight from the Sky interviewing people through this technology. What we saw was the world’s first actual hologram live on TV. What a truly historic Wednesday it was!

Usually, history is made through a grave disaster like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the infamous 9/11 terror attack. However, the election of the first black man as President of the United States wasn’t a disaster to remember. Someday after many years, when people ask you where were you when President Obama won the US presidency, you can either say that you were in your home watching CNN or in our case, at the SM Atrium attending the US Embassy’s Election Watch. At this point, we can only hope and pray that Barack Obama will be a good President.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.