Bakla Ako, May Reklamo?

The 2007 midterm elections is just around the corner. And in anticipation of the upcoming midterm elections, the Fabulous People of Training (FabPoT), which I am a member of, has exercised – or should I say practiced, their right to vote. You may remember them sharing their views on whether Richard Gomez should seek a seat in the Philippine Senate in a video that was posted on YouTube about three or four months ago.

We conducted our own mock elections in the spirit of nationalism and genuine concern for our country’s seemingly-hopeless political system. Also, we did this “elections” to produce a forecast based on our own individual votes.

[edit]What prompted us to stage this mock elections is the series of election-related forwarded emails we’ve been receiving. In the past few weeks, we have received all sorts of campaign praise releases and neutral information drive campaigns. One of which was a list of all the candidates, brief job descriptions, educational background, Congress session attendance (where applicable), bills submitted and votes (Yes,No,Abstained) in the Lower/Upper House – where applicable. These and our daily discussions on political ads, local elections, taxes and governance, graft and corruption, and campaign jingles were the main drivers for our mock elections exercise. {we work for a call center}

Of course, our results do not reflect the votes of the Filipino people who, hopefully, will troop to their local polling place this Monday. We are not trying to influence your votes by publishing our results here, but if you wanna base your own votes on ours, then it’s your choice. Some of the people who made it to our final list were a surprise – even WE were surprised!

So how did we conduct our own mock elections? Just like the regular elections, we had a print-out of the names of the candidates running for senator, had one of the desks serve as a voting booth, and a small cardboard ballot box. The “voters’ had to fill out a ballot (a piece of paper with 12 numbered boxes) with the names or Comelec-accepted/registered nicknames of the candidates. Simple instructions like they did not need to fill-out the 12 boxes if they didn’t feel like it, and also to vote honestly, vote from their conscience. Voters were not allowed to share with others the names of the candidates they voted for, nor were they allowed to discuss the recently-concluded mock elections until after the votes were counted.

Like in the actual elections, the counting also had a “board of canvassers,” “party/candidate representatives,” and “international observers.”

Total number of Voters: 21

Male: 14 Female: 7

Gay Population: 4

(Yes, we have a gay vote too. And I personally believe that our voices were heard and I also believe that we contribute to the political debate at work. And yes, I also think that our views on different issues are being listened to by our colleagues. Para ano pa’t naging Equal Opportunity Employer kame diba – uhm paki-relate na lang).

Here are the results of the mock elections:

1. Arroyo, Joker (Joker)
2. Pangilinan, Francis (Kiko)
3. Recto, Ralph (Korecto)
4. Escudero, Francis Joseph (Chiz)
5. Villar, Manuel Jr. (Manny)
6. Legarda, Loren (Loren)
7. Zubiri, Juan Miguel (Migz)
8. Defensor, Michael (Tol)
9. Aquino, Benigno Simeon III (Noynoy
10. Lacson, Panfilo (Ping)
11. Angara, Edgardo (Ed)
12. Sotto, Vicente III (Tito)

View Gormful’s Analysis of the results here.The percentage you see on the right column below is the number of votes they received divided by the number of total voters (and multiplied by 100) – basta yung computation ng percentage yun na yun. Hehe.

Complete Results after the jump. No, Richard Gomez nor Cesar Montano did not get ANY votes at all!