EDITORIAL: Poll Valor

WHEN Filipinos lined up at their precincts on May 12, they were greeted not by faceless machines but by the steady hands and calm voices of nearly 760 thousand teachers and other poll workers—the Electoral Boards (EBs) who shepherd our democracy every election cycle.

These men and women shoulder 20-hour workdays, unruly crowds, and the ever-present threat of harassment or litigation, all so that the rest of us can mark a ballot and go home.

It is fitting, then, that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) secured an additional ₱1,000 tax-free honorarium for every EB member.

The Department of Budget and Management’s release of ₱758.5 million lifts the EB chairperson’s pay to ₱12,000 and each clerk’s and third member’s to ₱11,000. Technicians and support staff likewise see increases.

Yes—these amounts remain modest, and still subject in some areas to a 15 percent withholding tax—but they acknowledge, at last, that clean elections are impossible without adequately supported poll workers.

The improvement is not only monetary. In Davao City, honoraria were actually released on time, within the 15-day window Comelec set but rarely met in past polls.

Teachers there hailed the early payout as “a major improvement,” proof that a bureaucracy can learn from its own post-election autopsies.

Just as noteworthy is the quiet success of mall voting. Some 74,099 citizens chose air-conditioned concourses over stifling classrooms; turnout in SM, Megaworld, and Robinsons branches hovered between 77 and 81 percent—several points higher than the national average.

By meeting voters where they already are, Comelec chipped away at one of democracy’s most stubborn obstacles: convenience. For senior citizens, persons with disabilities, and weekend workers, a ballot beside the supermarket may be the difference between having a voice and staying silent.

Critics will say the extra ₱1,000 is a pittance, or that malls commercialize a sacred civic act. They are not wrong to demand more. Poll duty still pays less than a single day of exam proctoring in some private schools, and many rural areas have no malls to speak of.

Yet progress deserves recognition, if only to build momentum for the next reform: perhaps a living-wage honorarium indexed to inflation; perhaps fully electronic disbursement to eliminate middle-man delays; certainly an expansion of alternative voting venues beyond the big-city malls.

Democracy is upheld by institutions, yes—but institutions stand on people. By adding a thousand pesos and by paying it promptly, the state signals that the people who count the votes count in every sense of the word.

Let us insist that this is only the first instalment on a larger debt of gratitude—and let us pay it in full before the next election bell rings.