At the risk of repeating myself—as long as I’ve been writing about these things, I suppose it is inevitable that I would go over the same ground more than once or twice—here are the things you don’t need to do on election day, May 14, 2018.
You don’t need an identification card—certainly not a voter’s ID—in order to exercise your right to vote. The names of registered and eligible voters are contained in the List of Voters held by the Electoral Boards; if you are registered and are eligible to vote in the precinct where you’re at, the Electoral Board will recognize you and let you vote.
You don’t need to tell the Electoral Board how old you are. The List of Voters was generated from the Commission on Elections database and the database knows your age. This means that the List will contain annotations that will tell the Electoral Board how many ballots you should be given: one Sangguniang Kabataan ballot, if you are aged 15 to 17; one SK ballot and one barangay election ballot, if you are from 18 to 30 years old; and only one Barangay ballot if you are 31 years old and up.
You don’t need to bring pens or pencils to the polling place. A pen will be provided.
You don’t actually need to take a selfie with your filled-out ballot either, as much as it feels absolutely necessary to document the experience and share it on social media.
You don’t need to bring campaign materials or election propaganda into the polling places. In fact, you shouldn’t as that would constitute electioneering, which you can get into a lot of trouble for.
You don’t need to be irritated or annoyed or snarky if the election workers allow a senior citizen or a person with disabilities or a pregnant woman cut in front of you in the line. Election workers have been trained to give priority access to people needing special assistance; when the day comes that you’re going to need such assistance yourself—and believe me, that day will certainly come—you will be thankful that such priority assistance is a thing. For now, don’t begrudge it to those who need it.
You don’t need to make all sorts of cutesy marks on your ballot just to emphasize your love or support for a particular candidate or group of candidates. The mere fact that you wrote their names on the ballot speaks volumes. If you really want to demonstrate your desire for these candidates to win the elections, here’s a tip: write down their full names as they appear on the Official List of Candidates attached to the ballot secrecy folder you will be allowed to use on election day. That way, you can be sure that when the ballots are counted, your votes are properly acknowledged and credited to your fam.
And lastly, let’s face it:
You don’t really need to vote. It is still a free country where voting is a privilege and not an obligation, but consider this: If you don’t vote, then the next two years of your barangay life will be shaped by the decisions of people you never chose to lead you; if you don’t vote, you will have willingly surrendered power over yourself and your real family, to some people who you might not even trust; if you don’t vote, you will have epically failed to do the most needful thing you never needed to do.