In the voting booth, you’re all alone. There’s no one there holding your hand, guiding your pen—no one except what’s in your head and what’s in your heart. In those two places, you have the voices of the people you listen to; the words of the writers you read, and what you remember of the life you’d been living up to that point. These are the things that will push you in one way or the other, influence your choices, and guide you in bridging the gap between the tip of your pen and the surface of the ballot paper.
Before you bring that pen down onto the paper, pause for a while, and consider.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government suggests that voters choose candidates who are matino, mahusay, maasahan; the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting says that voters ought to evaluate the candidates based on five considerations they call the 5Cs; the Rotary Club has its Apat na Tanong (Four Questions). Although these three “prescriptions” for voting wisely may vary in how they approach the issue, they all just boil down to one thing: trying to give voters tools with which they can evaluate the candidates who will soon be asking for their votes; in a word: criteria.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec), on the other hand, has always avoided prescribing criteria. As the body constitutionally charged with the conduct of elections, the Comelec obviously should remain impartial and, therefore, careful not to tell people, no matter how indirectly, who they should be voting for.
That stand, however, as proper as it is, does leave a gaping hole in voter education. In order to plug that gap, while still avoiding the practice of prescribing criteria, I suggest reminding people—especially pre- and first-time voters—of four things they should guard against. These four considerations are, to my mind, all anyone needs to guide them in their search for the person to vote for.
First: Don’t be lazy. Find out who’s running and for what, then find out everything you can about the candidates. Sadly, simply listening to campaign jingles and speeches of the candidates themselves doesn’t count as “finding out;” reliance on what a candidate says about himself is just a different form of laziness. Instead, do your own research. This coming 2018 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections, research could take the form of asking around about the candidates. Talk to as many sources as you can, listening to both the good accounts and the slanderings—by listening to people who love the candidate and those who dislike them, you get the opportunity to come up with your own evaluation of whether or not this person deserves your vote.
Second: Don’t be arrogant. Don’t dismiss anyone as being too unrefined or too unattractive or too whatever to be a leader. Leadership skill and integrity—these things are not measured by outward appearances or apparent behavior. Most of all, don’t make the mistake of writing someone off as being stupid, especially when they offer ideas that seem outlandish to you. Remember that no one knows everything—and that includes you. Give ideas, even those that strike you as nonsensical, a fair evaluation. If you still disagree, then that’s fine; what is objectionable is to dismiss an idea simply because you didn’t come up with it yourself.
Third: Don’t be selfish. While it is perfectly natural to keep an eye out for your self-interest in choosing candidates, being a member of your community means that you ought to think about the welfare of your community, as well. Not being selfish means, therefore, that if the person who you will benefit from might not actually have the best interests of your barangay at heart, then maybe you can set your own interests aside and pick someone else.
And, finally, do not ever forget the power you will be giving to the person who gets your vote. Seeing elections as giving someone an opportunity to serve the community is a valid way of looking at things. But, it is not the only way of understanding true importance of the right of suffrage; nor is it even the most pragmatic.
Elections involve granting power over yourself, to someone else. You feel that power in the laws that elected officials enact—laws that regulate what you can and cannot do, laws that dictate what you can and cannot afford, laws that hem you in. At the level of the barangay, that power can be felt even more acutely: the power to decide who can run a business or not, to say whether you deserve that remedy you wanted against an abusive neighbor, and in some cases, even to decide questions that ultimately affect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yes. That is, what is at stake in elections. So, before you even get that empty ballot in your hand, you should have already asked yourself the most basic question of all: Do you think that the person you want to vote for will use the power you are giving, in a way that you will accept?
If you’ve answered that, then take a deep breath and get ready to face the consequences of the choices you’re about to make.
It’s time to put pen to paper.