ELECTIONS THEN, E-LECTIONS NOW

Online elections in virtual learning? Not a chance. Online elections in a face-to-face setting?

Definitely.

The student elections for the University were last observed in March 2020 – face-to-face. But voting stopped for the UNO-Rians come Academic Year 2021-2022 as UNO-R shifted to an online setting.

This all boils down to a single question: why have online elections now?

Students have been deprived of voting without a comprehensive explanation or a transparency report on how the elections were discontinued. No other attempts to further clarify the situation were provided. The UNO-Rians deserve an explanation as to why an online election was impossible until a few months ago.

Sure, the online elections offer a more inclusive and convenient voting for the student body. But are we prepared to cater to a new shift in the trend?

To allow an estimated of 20 million subscribers to register their SIM cards, a 90-day extension was approved by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as per the enacted law aimed to curb cybercrime, Apr. 26.

Republic Act 11934 or the SIM Registration Act states that mobile device users must register their SIM cards by Apr. 26.

In a briefing in the Malacañan Palace last Apr. 25, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan John Uy shared that a ‘low turnout’ is not the main reason for the extension.

“It is just our bad habit of delaying to the last minute, the compliance [with] the law,” Uy said. An estimated of 15 to 20 million SIM cards remain unregistered, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

Seeing this number, Uy added that low turnouts were observed in island provinces, prompting the department to concentrate on these provinces and islands.

“We discovered that some of the low turnouts were in the island provinces, like Dinagat, Siquijor and Camiguin islands, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan. So, when it was presented, the President noticed that we need to put in more effort to deploy teams to these island provinces to address the low turnout,” he explained.

Furthermore, Uy reiterated that the 90-day extension is the last chance to register all active SIM cards, as unregistered ones may be deactivated come the deadline.