My First Automated Election Experience

Last Monday, May 10 marks the day of the Philippine automated election. It was not good as I expected. I thought voting will be more faster than before since it's already automated. Me and my father-in-law went to the Felipe Calderon Elementary School here in Tanza, Cavite at 7am to exercise our right to vote for our national and local leaders. I thought 7am was perfectly early time for us to go there but I was shocked to see that the school premises was already crowded with people. The front gate of the school is full of supporters of different parties giving sample ballots to the people. We searched for the room where our precinct belong. We noticed the new system have a waiting area and the actual voting area separated. Luckily, I saw my sis-in law already in lined and our precinct are in the same room so we just went straight to the end of the line. There are several precincts clustered in one room and only a single PCOS Machine is
assigned for each cluster. The clustering resulted to long lines and a lot of people are complaining and arguing with the PPCRV volunteers. It was really, really hot outside and we've waited inline for almost 4 hours due to poor voting turn systems before we can cast our vote. I carefully shaded the oval beside my selected candidate coz I don't want to waste my vote. And when I fed my ballot to the PCOS machine, I waited for the screen to say "Congratulations. Your voting has counted!" And when I saw it appeared, it gave me a sense of relief that my vote won't be wasted...I hope so...