The rejection also came amid warnings by the state weather bureau Pagasa that this month may see the warmest, hottest temperatures recorded since the onset of the El Niño dry spell last year.
And all because Comelec commissioner Rowena Guanzon said the transfer of some voting precincts to malls may violate a provision of the Omnibus Election Code that prohibits the physical transfer of polling precincts 45 days before Election Day.
The decision to approve the precinct transfer to malls was approved by Comelec 60 days before May 9. What Guanzon argued was the physical transfer of the polling precincts which Comelec chairman Andres Bautista said can be done only on the date of the election.
If the Comelec decided then to push through with the mall voting precinct plan months earlier, then the elderly, persons with disabilities and practically anyone covered by the plan who want to escape the humid heat and discomfort of voting in cramped, poorly ventilated schools can do so in the relative comfort of air-conditioned malls.
Unfortunately, the Comelec had been burned before by the Supreme Court ruling requiring them to issue voters’ receipts despite the Comelec’s insistence that voters’ receipts would enable politicians to engage in massive vote buying.
As it is, there are reports that some political operators have hatched a plan in which they give fake voters receipts to their targets who then give it to the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) and pocket the real receipts that they give to the vote buyers so they can get paid.
But the High Court has ruled and it’s now up to the voters and the BEIs to be vigilant about this. How to be vigilant while having to deal with the slow pace of voting and canvassing is something the public will have to deal with on May 9.
Aside from providing comfort and convenience, the mall voting precinct plan was intended to decongest the schools and barangay halls where most of the voting had been done for the past few decades.
True, there have been questions—like what if the mall owners are aligned with a certain politician or if the candidates themselves owned the malls—but there are conditions stipulated in the arrangements between the Comelec and these mall owners in order to erase any perception or suspicion of bias.
As it is, the voters now will have to find ways to make themselves comfortable while waiting for their turn to vote.
The Comelec has held mall voting in the 2013 elections for the elderly and the PWDs, there’s no reason why it cannot expand it across the country in the next elections in 2019.