Why the low turnout of absentee voters

MANILA, Philippines—The month-long overseas absentee voting is about to come to an end. Yet, the initial turnout tells of the statistical impossibility of even coming close to a passing percentage. It is a far cry from the government’s confident target of 60 to 70 percent.

In the most recent count of the Department of Foreign Affairs, only 81,732 Filipinos abroad voted from April 10 to May 7. This is just about 13.85 percent of the total 589,830 overseas Filipinos registered to vote in the national elections this year.

Even Hong Kong, which is the consistent OAV topnotcher and is expected to yield a much higher figure because of election automation, delivered a shockingly low turnout , only over 33,000 cast their votes, just half of the Philippine consulate’s target of 60,000 or less than a third of the 95,355 total registrants.

The figures are much more disappointing if we compare them to the results of the 2004 presidential elections. In the first OAV, 64 percent of the 233,092 voted. This is twice the present running total of overseas votes. In Hong Kong, about 65,000 voted in 2004, more than double the current initial count.

Lazy electorate?

Before the OAV started, the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat and the Commission on Elections’ Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting were proudly assuring the public that they were geared and prepared for a high turnout.

In the three-day OAV training for the Philippines’ foreign service corps, Ambassador Nestor Padalhin, vice chairman of the DFA-Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat, gave his personal guarantee that the turnout would not go far from the 2004 results, supposedly because of the government’s competent machinery. “(But) despite everything that we are doing, promoting it, campaigning…the bottom line is still the voter.”

It is short of saying that a low turnout could be attributed only to a lazy and irresponsible electorate. So is it really the overseas voters’ fault?

Unaddressed problems

In 2004, a joint congressional oversight committee was created to investigate the dismal results of the first OAV. The problems identified were: short period of registration, lack of voting centers, limited day-offs, and additional costs for OFWs to vote.

Based on reports of Filipino migrant organizations in Hong Kong, Middle East, and Europe, it appeared that the government failed to address these factors.

For one, the 12-month registration period was not implemented. The Comelec decreased it to 10 months. Instead of opening it in December 2008, registration only started in February 2009 and ended last August, four months less than the prescribed period.

Calls for an extension were dismissed by the Commission on Elections. “Many were disenfranchised because of the shortened registration,” said John Leonard Monterona, Migrante’s coordinator for the Middle East.

Lack of education

Monterona claimed that voters’ education drives were very limited. Scant information was provided by the embassies, consulates, and other establishments. Those who got it had it only by chance—because they happened to be in the embassy for another matter.

There are around 1.8 million Filipinos in the Middle East and Africa, but only 225,148 are registered voters. So far, only around 18,000 participated in the polls.

In Europe, the embassies did almost nothing to encourage and educate the voters. According to Rio Mondelo, communications officer of Migrante-Europe, “though there were government efforts to reach out to our kababayan, these were in partnership with Migrante-Europe and other (non-government) organizations. Of course, in our own capacity, we can’t cover the majority of the potential migrant voters,” he said.

There are 61,294 registered voters in Europe. Only 3,858 voted on the first week of the OAV.

It is particularly important to educate voters in Hong Kong where the first automated elections system is being held. The United Filipinos in Hong Kong said the information drive was done through the initiative of OFW groups. It was only in March when the Comelec assembled migrant leaders for a voters’ education.

Dolores Balladares, Unifil head, reported that since the Philippine post acted too late, voters’ education was still being held until the third week of voting when the focus should have already shifted to bringing the voters to the polling places. “We offered help by informing the voters about their precincts and sequence numbers,” she said. “But what did the Comelec do? It reconfigured the precincts a few days before the opening of the OAV. All our efforts just went down the drain and provided another reason to confuse voters further.”

Because of this, at least 140 OFWs were not able to find themselves on the list on the first day of voting. Out of the 95,355 voters in Hong Kong, only 5,389 were able to vote on the first week.

Distant polling places

There are other factors that discouraged OFWs. Not only are there few voting centers, most of which are based in embassies and consulates, but these centers are also inaccessible given the limited time and money.

“The embassy is far from the concentration of Filipinos in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Ultrecht,” said Mondelo. “More than an hour of travel is needed to reach the embassy and we need to spend 20 euros (P1,200) just to get there.”

Monterona said 40 percent of OFWs in Saudi Arabia are located in provinces and cities, away from voting centers located in Jeddah, Riyadh, and Al Khobar-Dammam. Aside from the travel expense, migrants also face the difficulty of asking permission from their employers. “Two days are needed for travel. The Friday day-off is not enough especially for those staying in far-flung areas,” he said.

For OFWs in remote locations, the Comelec implemented postal voting. Officials sent 138,113 OFWs in 49 countries with ballots through mail. The answered ballots must be mailed back and must reach the Comelec on or before May 10 for these to be counted.

Garry Martinez, Migrante International chairperson, said his group received reports from Europe and the US of numerous mailed ballots returned to embassies because of wrong addresses. In New York, 1,000 postal ballots returned. “There is also no guarantee that the OFW will receive the ballots because (his) employer might not hand it over to him,” he said.

Worse, in Italy, OFWs received OAV packets without the most important item–the official ballot, according to a report Migrante received from Ugnayan ng mga Manggagawang Migrante Tungo sa Pag-unlad.

Other questions on the postal voting remain unanswered: What if a ballot gets lost in the inefficient postal system? What if an answered ballot does not come in time for the counting? Where and how will the postal ballots be counted? These uncertainties make the postal system very vulnerable to manipulation.

OFWs in Saudi Arabia raised concerns on the non-use of indelible ink. “The indelible ink performs a special security function, and that is to ensure no flying voters or ghost voters could cast their votes, especially after allowing the manual tagging system,” Monterona said.

With both the missing ink and the new tagging system in place, voters can’t help but speculate a planned shady scheme.

Diminishing interest

Migrant leaders also admitted that many OFWs have already lost interest in voting. “Many of our kababayan have lost faith in the Comelec. They see the electoral process as already tainted with fraud and corruption,” said Mondelo.

“A big factor in having second thoughts in voting is the perception that the previous elections did not result in a change in the system. This was further reinforced after the ‘Hello Garci’ scandal and issues of election-related violence,” added Balladares.

Monterona said OFWs go abroad to give their families a better life. “Their prime concern is their economic needs,” he said. “They will really think twice about sacrificing a day’s pay for registration and/or an electoral process they do not trust at all.”

Still, the migrant groups have not lost hope. They are continuously educating fellow OFWs to raise the level of awareness and participation in the elections.

While criticizing the shortcomings of electoral institutions, they forwarded concrete suggestions to increase the number of voters. Included in their proposals is having OFWs register before leaving the country through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration or the airport.

Unifil-HK proposed additional registration locations and satellite voting centers, particularly in distant areas with a large Filipino concentration.

The group believes that the key to the OAVs success is political will. There must be sufficient machinery and funds earmarked to raise the awareness of overseas Filipinos on the OAV as an important political exercise, it says.

The question as to whether who is accountable for the low turnout is not debatable. The problem rests entirely on the ill-preparedness and ill conduct of Philippine officials in charge of the OAV. The resulting massive disenfranchisement further marginalizes OFWs from the nation’s political process.

It can be considered a huge crime by the government, given that the Philippine economy is being kept afloat by the Filipino migrant worker’s unparalleled sacrifices abroad. –Ilang-Ilang Quijano, Migrante OAV Watch