Our very flawed election system

We exalt election results as our collective wisdom as a people and romanticize Filipinos as intelligent voters. But are we really? If so, why do we vote idiots into office and put up with our very flawed electoral system?

Party-list voting best illustrates our dimness. Parties hail us voters as heroic makers of history. Yet they look down on us with the way they name themselves. Of the 85 accredited "party-list groups" (even that official term is illogically redundant), more than half start with "A", as in Aahitan Kita or Aba Bakit or Ang Pangit. Many of the rest have "B"; only a third of the total use other letters. That’s because we, collectively wise and individually intelligent voters who heroically make history, lack the attention span to read beyond the first few alphabetical entries.

Perhaps a 90-day campaign is too short to spread word about a party and platform that we attentive voters still can’t recall them on Election Day. But we politely let the intellectual elite behind the parties to decide that. We let wise men in the Comelec accredit unknown parties solely from claims to embody a marginalized sector, say tricycle men, and a commissioner’s kin as first congressman-nominee. And we revere the wisest of all who wrote into our Constitution a parliamentary-suited multiparty order that fosters party-list voting, incongruously alongside a presidential system.

Nuisance candidates also display our dumbness. Incumbent officials swear to owe their posts to us thinking voters. But on reelection time they get so het up about namesakes running because we, discerning voters and ballot tallymen, might not distinguish them from the upstarts. The obvious solution is to automate elections and have us voting touch-screen not only by candidates’ names but also by photos. And also, throw the nuisance bets in jail for fooling around with elections or in asylums for being fools. Yet we haven’t elected the smart legislators to enact those.

Political dynasties are as much to be blamed on us voters as on the dynasts. It’s us who muster collective wisdom to vote husbands and wives and offspring successively and even simultaneously into office. It’s us who exercise intelligence to then let them illegally amass wealth, some of which them share with us in the form of presents when they thrill us with gracing our baptismal or wedding parties. We equate surnames with inherited right to public office — and then we complain that the dynasts have kept the Republic poor since birth.

We tolerate campaigns that have grown increasingly expensive. We do not mind that national candidates overspend hundreds of millions of pesos for positions that pay only a few tens of thousands a month. We then let them collect multimillion-peso pork barrels so long as they fling morsels our way, like trophies for the barangay sports fest. If the usual dynasts back out of the race due to the stiff costs, we replace them with celebrities. And then we complain again that we remain unprogressive.

Our election laws are irrational and our election officials inept; still we do nothing. We let candidates’ posters deface our walls, hillsides and trees, and we don’t blacklist them. We have tediously long ballots to fill up — for President, Vice President, 12 Senators, Congressman, Governor, Vice Governor, Provincial Board Members, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilors — yet we dare not desynchronize national from local elections or find some other remedy. We reason that, after all, we are bright voters. Then, we rely on the codigo of the political ward leader to instruct us whom to elect.

Our rules insult us, and we consent. We are made to present ID cards at the precinct, sign on the voters’ ledger, thumb-mark the ballot, and show our faces to poll watchers as part of routine security and anti-fraud. After finally letting us cast our ballot, they stain our forefinger with indelible ink, as if we are all flying voters to be grounded. Such rules were made by the very senators and congressmen, whom we entrusted with public office, but who cannot trust us supposedly sensible voters in return.

Come to think of it, if we’re so intelligent the voters as we claim to be, how come there are countless voter-education drives every election? They come in various forms: from songs that teach us not to accept money from candidates or be blinded by celebrity glitter, to outright church seminars on how to study candidates’ backgrounds. And if we still don’t get it, we are told straight by our bishops and cult leaders whom to vote.

The irony of ironies is that one of every two of us astute voters, according to the pollster SWS, is sure that our senatorial votes won’t be counted in May. And yet we persist.

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