The Philippine Online Chronicles

The first ever automated Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) in Hong Kong and Singapore went smoothly. Comelec spokesman, James Jimenez reported that 218 people voted during the first day. Perhaps due to the excitement of the OAV, Noynoy Aquino (or the person behind his twitter account) suddenly announced:

Based on first day of OAV in HK, we are leading by a huge margin at around 80% with Pres. Estrada at 12% then Villar et. al. Thank you so much.

When I saw the tweet, I immediately scoured around for news.

James Jimenez noticed the tweet “No counting yet. How can you tell? You might want to reconsider this tweet. RT @noynoyaquino: Based on first day of OAV in HK, we're...”

Tonyo Cruz asked “@Noynoy2010 @clariztanganco Do you have proof to your claim Noynoy getting 80% of OAV vote in HK? Pls share.” and added “To @noynoyaquino or whoever is running his Twitter account: Was there an independent HK exit poll for you to claim getting 80% of votes?”

Seeing James Jimenez's tweets to @noynoyaquino, I  re-tweeted  the following points in Twitter.

• Candidates and their partisans should refrain from trying to use the Overseas Absentee Voting exercise to generate favorable trends.
• Voters should be aware that OA votes will not be counted yet, so any claims of leads are premature. At worst, they are manipulative.
• FYI: results of exit polls may be announced after the closing on the polls on election day. Note that polls in HK will not close until 5/10.
• Results of exit polls, announced after closing of polls (5/10), must identify total respondents, places where taken, and state that the...

Fair Election Practices Act

James Jimenez reminded us that exit polling is regulated and there are requirements to doing it under Section 31, COMELEC Resolution  8758, otherwise known as the “Fair Election Practices Act”

SEC. 31. Exit Polls. – Exit polls may only be taken subject to the following requirements:

1. Pollsters shall not conduct their surveys within fifty (50) meters from the polling place, whether said survey is taken in a home, dwelling place and other places;
2. Pollsters shall wear distinctive clothing and prominently wear their identification cards issued by the organization they represent;
3. Pollsters shall inform the voters that they may refuse to answer; and
4. The results of the exit polls may be announced after the closing of the polls on election day, and must identify the total number of respondents, and the places where they were taken. Said announcement shall state that the same is unofficial and does not represent a trend.

The requirement for announcing exit poll results is that it must state it is unofficial and is not a trend. Neither was present in the @noynoyaquino twitter. (It has been deleted since then.)

Was there a violation of the Fair Election Practices Act?

Any person found guilty of any election offense or in violation of the fair election practices will face a penalty of one to six years imprisonment and will also be disqualified from voting and holding public office.  James explains that “actually, to be very  technical about it, there is a violation.  But, like I said, gentle reminder lang muna. We all excited. “

Varied reactions were raised .  Tonyo cites that it is an example of trapo ways of @noynoyaquino and making false claims to poll "lead." Atheista exclaimed “@noynoyaquino claims to have won 80% of the vote in HK. WOW. THE NERVE" and added that “claiming to have won 80% of the vote is WINNING in anyone's book. it's not a semantics battle, really. It's trending.”

Poisunga believes that one tweet is too brief for them to have possibly included all relevant information while Bluevill thinks it is not important since most are decided at this point except for the nine percent who are undecided so trending will not influence them.

Trending and survey-driven analysis

Surveys are just surveys for a certain time period. Six months ago, I wrote on looking beyond survey results. Unfortunately, the alarming thing is that gullible Filipinos readily believe that Pulse Asia and Social Weather Station (SWS) survey results are reflective of what the results of the election would be, and that gullible voters even tend to base their decisions on who to vote for based on these surveys. The minds of the Filipino electorate are just being conditioned to believe that the results of these survey show the same results that can be expected in the May 10 elections. As you can see over the past six months, I was right when I stated that voters’ reason to choose a candidate changes over each poll period.  It can even change two weeks before the elections.

The real results are actually on election day. The trending effects of surveys and exit polls disrupt the people’s ability to choose between a good and a bad candidate.  It does not help that traditional media solicits views from political analysts, thus contributing to the trending phenomena.  Ramon Casiple of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms said the presidential race was now down to Aquino of the Liberal Party, Villar of the Nacionalista Party and Estrada of the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino. Even Bobby Tuazon of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance made an identical analysis of a three-cornered fight

Administration senatorial candidate Raul Lambino disputed Casiple’s analysis and said surveys did not reflect the true sentiments of the electorate. Senator Dick Gordon cried foul over the assessment that it was now a three-way fight for the presidency and called it “a ridiculous and indecent effort at trending.”

“Who gave them the franchise to condition the minds of our people? This will annihilate the ability of our people to think.”

Gordon claimed that the “ruling elite” was behind the purported effort to condition voters into thinking that they were limited to only three choices for the presidency.

The electorate needs to exercise caution as media will soon start to bring out all these survey-driven analyses by political analysts and scientists. The Fair Election Practices Act is in place.  Voters need to be vigilant and take a proactive role in assessing and communicating to Comelec if candidates follow or violate these fair election rules.

Let’s not waste our vote by basing it on trending and  survey-driven analysis.  Character, competence, clear vision, and coherent platforms of a candidate are crucial in the selection process.

Screencap of @jabjimenez from Twitter while @noynoyaquino from @erwinthegreat