3 of 4 Filipinos ‘satisfied’ with May automated polls

Three in every four Filipinos were “satisfied" with the conduct of the May 10 automated polls— a “marked improvement" compared to the two previous manual elections, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed Wednesday. The SWS pegged voters’ satisfaction with the general conduct of the May polls at 75 percent based on a survey conducted by the pollster on 1,200 adult Filipinos from June 25 to 28. The figure is the “highest ever" compared to the past two manual elections, since satisfaction during the 2004 presidential polls was only at 53 percent, while the 2007 midterm elections got a lower rating of 51 percent, according to SWS. Only 15 percent of the respondents said they were “dissatisfied" with the way the May 2010 polls were conducted, while the remaining eight percent said they were “undecided," the SWS said. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) also got higher satisfaction ratings this year compared to the two previous manual polls, getting a rating as high as 97 percent in its automated way of “counting of votes in the precinct level." According to the survey, the poll body also got the approval of 95 percent of the respondents in its manner of “ensuring peace and order" during the May polls, and a high 92 percent for “the consolidation of vote counts at the city/municipal and provincial level." Other institutions included in the survey, such as the board of election inspectors (57 percent), the Philippine National Police (51 percent) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (46 percent), also got favorable ratings from the respondents, SWS said. The survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews to randomly selected respondents from Metro Manila, central and southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus three percent, according to SWS. - AC/KBK, GMANews.TV