Cheap

Talk is cheap — especially talk of “failure of elections.”

It might be that the main presidential contenders are not pleasing us enough with quality ideas. Because of that, media speculation has intermittently drifted to speculating about the fate of this year’s elections.

There is reason to be anxious. This is the first time we will be having fully automated polls. The technology is new. The long ballot — thanks to this truly bad idea of a party-list system — is intimidating.

The merchants of paranoia claim to have performed time-and-motion studies on the voting process and discovered there will not be enough time on election day to accommodate all voters. I suspect, however, that these time-and-motion studies presumed strictly sequential voting. In actuality, as much voters as may be accommodated in the voting centers will be filling up ballots simultaneously. It takes very little time to feed the ballots into the automated counting machines.

It is likely that there could be more spoiled ballot than usual. The tests indicate that unnecessary markings, over-voting or even sweat stains could cause the machines to reject ballots.

The problem of having too many spoiled ballots is being addressed. The Comelec is sending out ballot facsimiles to all voters so they can practice filling out the actual ballots on election day. It is important that all voters take their responsibilities seriously and study the new voting process well ahead.

The merchants of malice are now peddling the idea that “failure of elections” will be declared because of the large number of spoiled ballots. Really? But who will declare it? The Comelec? But the percentage of tolerable ballot spoilage has not even been defined as yet. We could have half the ballots spoiled and there will be no basis for saying elections failed.

Some candidates have claimed that the rotating brownouts in Mindanao are intentionally inflicted to set the predicate for declaring “failure of elections” in that island.

That is an entirely unwarranted claim. First, it is easy to check available generating capacity and compare it with volume of electricity demand. Second, it is a rather crude and extremely costly plot if it were one considering the economic devastation the power shortage is causing, not to mention the discontent it is generating. Third, the automated voting system comes with its own battery kit and is not dependent on the grid.

So there: an unwarranted claim is simply an unwarranted claim.

The merchants of intrigue are going around town saying the automated polls will be systematically sabotaged in order to set the conditions for declaring “failure of elections.” They have offered no evidence at all about such a plot and their claims must not be dignified.

At any rate, unwarranted scenarios are being built upon unwarranted scenarios. Scenario-building has become a cottage industry of sorts these days. We have reached the point where the newer scenarios stretch the boundaries of logic intolerably.

I ran into someone the other day who said that, in the confusion and chaos following what presumably will be a harrowing experience with poll automation, President Arroyo will declare martial rule. Since Congress is not in session, there is no check on the declaration.

I could only groan and make the most annoyed face I could manage. Then I reminded this person that the Constitution requires Congress to be convened to pass over a martial rule declaration. Then what about questions of legitimacy after such a declaration is made?

There are too many trip points in this contrived scenario. If such a scenario was passed by me, I told my anxious friend, I would trash it immediately. It simply will not work. The President, I said pointedly, is too cautious a politician to even consider riding the tiger.

The odds are a thousand to one against getting away with such a clumsy scenario. Only an idiot will try and do it. Even then, the cooperation of several thousand other idiots will be needed to even attempt pulling it off. There are, to put it bluntly, not enough idiots to hatch something like this.

But there are, apparently, enough idiots keeping themselves busy building the strangest scenarios. There should be a thousand other productive things they could apply their imaginations to.

We cannot blame people for being anxious. New things are always met with anxiousness. Automated polls are new things.

In addition to the understandable anxiety, however, there is twisted partisan inspiration to all the scenario-building as well. There are those who want to paint the outgoing administration as completely sinister. And there are those who need a climate of political alarm to improve their political positions.

The scenarios being peddled by the irresponsible have effects similar to mind-bending drugs. One candidate jousts with the windmills of unwarranted scenarios and calls up the ghosts of “people power” to slay the dragons.

What is easily forgotten is this: there are no widely shared criteria for declaring a “failure of elections.” Maybe we should get together and produce those criteria first before running about screaming “Wolf!”

Then, perhaps, we could do constructive things like participating in voter-education programs, joining poll watchdog groups and offering ourselves to protect the electoral process.