This week, I went to the Commission on Elections to register as a voter. The last time I voted was in the 90’s, the one that eventually elected President Ramos. I think I was still in college. It was my first time to vote so I was quite excited. Flashback to 14 or so years. I left the country and missed out in all the political “circus” that happened for the last 14 or so years. I was not there when Mr. Estrada was elected. I am really sorry for missing out on what was happening back home. I had no idea that there was such a thing as “Absentee Voting”. Anyways, I was probably just apathetic. Anyways, now that I am back and having reacquired my Filipino citizenship, I felt again excited to vote in the 2010 election. It’s like being 18 again.
I went to the City Hall and ask around where I could register as a voter. The Comelec office was right at the back of the older building which was in front of the new and shiny Municipal building. I was hoping that I could just reactivate or transfer my registration but after failing to retrieve my records from their computer he just decided that I start with a new application. He gave me 3 pages of application form which was actually 1 with 2 copies. While filling up the form outside in a makeshift covered booth I saw that there were some information that I needed and I didn’t have it at that time (I needed the certificate number of my dual citizenship and the date reacquired). I decided to just continue filling up the application at home.
The next day, I went back and submitted my form. The officer told me to sign the form and give it to the second table. After a few minutes, my name was called and I was asked to take my seat on what I would now call the high-tech zone. I was impressed to see that now they have the new high-tech way of capturing fingerprints. They now have biometric capturing devices and the form I filled up was re-entered by the other officer into their registration database. It was all organized. There were clear instructions posted: they had made labels for each fingers so that if the officer said 1,2,3 you know which fingers to press into the biometric reader. After that I sat in front of him and he took a picture of me with a digital camera and they also captured my signature electronically. After this, I was asked to photocopy my drivers license and include it with my application form submitted to the officer on the last table.. Overall, I spent around 30 minutes there. I would have been totally impressed by now had he not said that my voters id will be available “anytime before the May 2010 elections”. Huh!?
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