[Local Vote] Praying for the elections? Then do poll watching too

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You cannot pray with conviction for an exercise in which you barely participate. What can you be vigilant about in the last few days before elections?

The church I belong to has started a daily prayer campaign for the 2025 elections, ending on polling day itself on Monday, May 12. Each day, a set of specific prayer points are posted on its social media accounts so we can both be guided and have something handy to share to our online circles. (I share the daily updates here.)

As I write this, the “12 Days of Prayer for God-honoring Election” is on its seventh day, and the themes so far indicate that we intend to cover all aspects of and stakeholders in the elections: the leaders, the voters, the poll workers, the election system and technologies, the security forces, etc. 

If your faith groups have similar initiatives, I have a proposition: You cannot be a prayer warrior without being a poll watcher. 

What is poll watching?

I’m talking about poll watching in a broader sense. 

It’s not limited to the old concept of a person signing up with a candidate’s camp, in exchange for compensation, to serve as their eyes and ears in a polling precinct. 

It’s not a one-day engagement where you just assist your principal’s known voters in finding their names on lists, and then making sure votes are counted properly, and ballots, election returns, and certificates of canvass are transported accordingly to the board of canvassers. 

Poll watching is keeping an eye on every phase of the election exercise, and doing your part in making it honest, orderly, peaceful, and credible. 

Poll watching is being mindful of your conduct and choices as a voter — from the message you communicate about candidates and elections, the language you use when posting on social media, the courage you demonstrate when surfacing community concerns that candidates have to address, and the morality and decency that you reflect in the kinds of candidates you are supporting.  

What do poll watcher watch out for?

What does this mean? That poll watching should have started when the election process began — from the time you took to heart your duty as citizen and registered (or reactivated your registration) as a voter. 

Okay, it’s too late for that, you’d say. I know. But let me give you a rundown of what you should have watched from the beginning and up to this time. This can be a handy reference for the next election cycle: 

• Registration of non-residents as voters 
• Finalization of the voters’ list (Read my piece that never gets old: Cheats are messing with the voters’ list.)
• Awarding of election contracts, from paper, ink, and voting software and technology. 
• Printing of ballots and other campaign paraphernalia (Even here, cheating can happen, as a candidates name can disappear, for example.)
• Contracting with warehouses in the regions where these paraphernalia will be stored until election day (Owners could have ties to candidates, making them partisan and allowing shenanigans before the paraphernalia are distributed to the precincts.)
• Transport of the election paraphernalia to the regions (They cannot be late! Also, bad actors can target to damage or switch these to cause delays or election failures.)

Last few days before elections

But in the last week of the campaigns, what can you still be vigilant about? 

• VOTE BUYING AND VOTE SELLING will intensify the day or night before and the wee hours of election day. While in some areas political camps still do the crude distribution of cash, many have adopted sophisticated forms, like bank and e-wallet transfers. Some shrewd operators give out partial amounts before the casting of votes, and pay the rest once the voters have delivered.
  • You’ll know it’s happening — usually when there are gatherings disguised as caucus, briefing, training, preparations for poll tasks. 

• VOTE SUPPRESSION AND VOTER INTIMIDATION will be a tactic in areas where an incumbent with weak standing is projected to lose. Politicians’ camps can resort to terrorizing voters known to be supportive of their rivals, so they don’t go out and vote. (Sometimes, vote buying is done for the same effect — voters are paid not to go out so they won’t be able to cast their votes for the payor’s rival.)
  • The signs will be clear: Rivals’ offices, headquarters, or safe houses are raided or enclosed by police checkpoints, to prevent them from implementing election-day strategies. The rival camps are will then be unable to  coordinate with supporters who will be needing assistance to go to polling places or legitimate allowances for whole-day poll watching duties.

• PRE-ELECTION CHEATING will be the easiest way to control the outcome of the elections since the automation has made it difficult for operators to forge, alter, or steal the ballots, election returns, and certificates of canvass. Local politicians with a strong grip on their constituencies can seize the ballots and pre-shade them before they are distributed to the precincts and fed to the vote-counting machines.
  • This usually happens in remote areas run by warlords, and will require the participation of the entire complement of local treasurers (the custodian of election paraphernalia), teachers, local election boards, and security forces who are either complicit or simply terrified to refuse orders. 

• FALSE LEADS will abound to discourage voters from going out to vote. Additional IDs or requirements to vote, a precinct has been dissolved or transferred, voting has stopped, precincts are prematurely closed, this candidate has withdrawn from the race, that candidate has been disqualified, precincts have run out of ballots (they cannot, because the number of ballots Comelec prints is as many as the registered voters), transmissions are intercepted, unfounded allegations of cheating — all sorts of rumors. 

What can you do? 

So what can you do about these — again, aside from praying that these efforts be frustrated?  

1. Report the violations of election laws that you monitor. Comelec task forces have social media accounts you can message (for vote buying, for example, you can report to the Kontra-Bigay page). You can also raise the matter in the voter-hotline channel on the Rappler Communities app — Comelec personnel are there to receive reports. 
2. Be a responsible consumer, producer, and distributor of information. Don’t share unconfirmed “news” or anything that will abet the dirty tricks enumerated above. Putting a question mark in your caption still aid these ploys. 
3. Volunteer with election watchdogs, if there’s still time to sign up. There’s Namfrel (National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections), the PPCRV (Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting), LENTE (Legal Network for Truthful Elections), and local poll organizations in your areas. These volunteer groups assist voters, record incidents of suppression and violence, as well as violations of election laws. 

And, yes, get down on your knees in private, fold your hands together in supplication, close your eyes and constantly whisper a prayer as you go about your daily business. But, this time, in earnest. 

You cannot pray with conviction for an exercise in which you barely participate. Prayer, after all, is asking God to use you, and how He can use you.

I hope this blog has given you some practical ideas after you say “Amen.” – Rappler.com

‘LOCAL VOTE’ SERIES 

• [Local Vote] All elections are local — and that makes you powerful
• [Botong Lokal] Lahat ng boto ay galing sa ibaba
• [Local Vote] Defeating a dynasty is not in Leni Robredo’s hands
• [Botong Lokal] Hindi si Leni Robredo ang titibag sa dinastiya 
• [Local Vote] In vote-rich Calabarzon, PrimeWater makes a killing
• [Botong Lokal] Ganansiya ng PrimeWater sa vote-rich Calabarzon

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