High hopes, high stakes

   

SOCIAL CLIMATE
By Mahar Mangahas

THE IMPENDING first-time nationwide implementation of an automated election system (AES) is accompanied by heightening public expectations and anxieties. Figures cited below are from the SWS media releases of March 2, 2009, Jan. 19, 2010, and March 26, 2010, on the SWS website.

The 2008 situation. Let us recall that the ARMM election of August 2008 was used as a one-region trial run of the AES. Two months later, in an October 2008 SWS national survey, 55 percent felt that a nationwide AES would improve the election process. Since a large minority of 42 percent felt the opposite, at that time national opinion tilted towards the AES only by a small balance.

In ARMM itself, however, opinions were very favorable. In December 2008, an SWS poll of 900 ARMM voters (3 percent error margin) on their personal experience in August found a very large 84 percent saying that the election process had improved. Most of them considered the 2008 ARMM election free and fair, recommended using the AES in the May 2010 national election, and believed that the Commission on Elections would be ready for it.

Click Mahar Mangahas.

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