1. There will be two different kinds of ballots used in the 2018 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections—the barangay ballot and the SK ballot.
2. The barangay ballot will be used by voters aged 18 and up, to elect the Punong Barangay and the members—called Kagawad—of the Sangguniang Barangay.
3. The SK ballot, on the other hand, will be used by voters aged 15 to 30 who are registered in the SK system, properly referred to as the Katipunan ng Kabataan.
4. Both the barangay and SK ballots will prominently feature the name of the electoral exercise for which they will be used—the barangay elections and the Sangguniang Kabataan elections, respectively.
5. The barangay and SK ballots that will be used all over the country, except in Mindanao, will bear the date “October 23, 2017,” because these ballots were printed in 2017, supposedly for use in the polls scheduled for that year. Unfortunately, the law postponing the 2017 BSKE was enacted only after all the ballots had already been printed.
6. Ballots bound for Mindanao, however, are still being printed and will bear the correct date—May 14, 2018. These ballots were not printed in 2017, since the Commission on Elections (Comelec) had promptly declared the suspension of elections in Mindanao as a consequence of the imposition of martial law in that part of the country.
7. Both barangay and SK ballots will contain the following instructions: “Fill out the ballot secretly, using a ballot secrecy folder. Do not put any distinctive mark on any part of this ballot.”
8. Preserving the secrecy of the voter’s ballot is an essential part of the right of suffrage as it protects the voter from undue influence and from reprisals. This is the same reason why the Comelec prohibits the use of any means to duplicate the filled-out ballot, including photography—yes, even cell-phone photography.
9. Putting a “distinctive mark” means making the filled-out ballot identifiable in any way. This includes making small tears to the paper, writing anything on the ballot other than the names of the candidates being voted for, or otherwise ensuring that the ballot can be distinguished from all other ballots in the ballot box. This prohibition—which includes the drawing of hearts, smiley faces, stars and the like—is still intended to protect the secrecy of the individual’s vote.
10. Both barangay and SK ballots will indicate the position title being voted for, and a number of blank lines corresponding to the number of positions being contested. Thus, under the position title Punong Barangay, there will be one blank line; under the position title Kagawad, Sangguniang Barangay, there will be seven blank lines.
11. The blank lines will be numbered (like this list), 1., 2., 3., and so on.
12. If any name appears on the ballot in excess of the number of positions being contested, that name will be considered a stray vote and will not be counted.
13. The Omnibus Election Code Batas Pambansa 881 provides for more than 20 different ways a ballot can be interpreted. These are called the “Rules of Appreciation,” and they include such conventions as “the equity of the incumbent,” and “the neighborhood rule.”
14. The purpose of the Rules of Appreciation is to give the Boards of Election Tellers—the poll workers tasked with counting the ballots after the end of voting—guidance in counting the votes, in accordance with the overarching mandate to determine the voter’s intent.
15. The Rules are necessary because not everyone copies the names of the candidates as they appear on the Official List of Candidates, because the handwriting of some people can be really hard to decipher, and because many candidates have identical or at least similar sounding first or surnames.