And here are your officers for this year

23.17 Another anonymous source places Noey Arcinue’s lead over Keane Palatino at 1337 votes.

22.56 From Carlo Cruz: “Talagang we wanna congratulate Miko, Butch, Sars, and everyone else in the slate. Pati na din ang mga supporters. Kung wala sila para mag-motivate, wala kami.“

22.28 Tapat has captured all college assembly presidencies except for the CBE, according to an anonymous source. For the CCS, CATCH 2T8 went 3-1 in favor of Santugon, CATCH 2T9 went derecho, while MJ Yap gets the college assembly presidency.

22.25 Reena Collado is FAST 2005’s batch president. Simply said, Mara Navarro is the batch’s executive vice president. For FAST 2004, Chris Alcantara and Marisol Prieto win the batch assembly for Santugon, while Gretch Santos and Roj Enriquez win the Legislative Assembly for Tapat. For FAST 2006, the batch assembly is split between Santugon’s Lorenz de Castro and Tapat’s Kat Regalado, while Hugh Morris and Carry Lapitan win the Legislative Assembly for Tapat.

22.06 Jayvee Sacramento reports that Aimee Chua gets the college assembly slot for the College of Business and Economics. BnE 2007 goes straight while BnE 2008 goes derecho. BnE 2009 goes 3-1 in favor of Santugon; only Chichi Tullao wins for Tapat.

21.38 Unofficial results show Tapat winning the executive board 5-1. Noey Arcinue, Nicole Villarojo, Jecah Ginete, Jenn Lazo and Reagan Dykimching win their respective positions; only Stacy Carbonel wins for Santugon.

21.30 Mica Fernandez has been elected as college assembly president for the College of Liberal Arts. For FAST 2005, it’s a mixed slate: Mara Navarro and Reena Collado are your batch representatives, while Carlo Cruz and Osang Barcelon are your Legislative Assembly representatives.

After the fold, what happened before all these results came.

The last forty-five minutes

The Plaridel had released its election issue, and I was made aware of last year’s turnout figures. The CLA was somewhere along the 60% boundary; the CBE had a lower result. This year, though, it seems they were all having a hard time getting candidates to vote.

I was back at the CLA polling area by 12.15 today. I figured it’d be a fairly exciting time; to be honest, I haven’t seen voting end. Maybe it’s the compensation for not seeing anybody campaign their last. Not to mention that there were a fairly large number of people from both parties today, and it seems the mood was much lighter than yesterday. At last, I think, they can say it’s over – and it actually is.

To be honest, though, the announcement of the extension yesterday was way too early. If you can recall, it was out by around 10.00, and yet everyone was expecting voters to come by U-Break. Today was the first time I had a good conversation with Noey Arcinue about this, and she shares the same sentiments. Actually, the 50% turnout requirement for CLA was reached yesterday, except apparently for those under FAST 2004, and the same was noted for the ID 104 students at the CBE.

A struggle that seems hard to win

By this time the battle for voter turnout becomes the more important one. Sure, most of the students the parties have been asking claim either to have voted, or will vote later in the day, but that wasn’t even enough. At around noon, the COMELEC had already announced that the polls will be extended for one more day.

Of course that isn’t any welcome news for the people that have been watching the conduct of the elections at the designated CLA polling area. If yesterday everyone was looking forward to finally sitting back and relax, today they were trying their best to pull people in the booths and vote. In between the influx of people, however, they have been staying there, waiting for the opportunity to avert a polling extension – not exactly what everybody wants – while talking with friends from both sides of the spectrum.

But who’s to blame, really? The frosh have turned out tides, and already a good turnout has come out, as expected. Many argue that the upperclassmen are busy and all, and some think they may not just want to vote – but already it’s too late, and they’ve been pulling people in despite the notice already in full view. Maybe that notice deterred them away – those procrastinators, as usual. Or some might see it differently.

“Eh lurve it!”

Finally, I posted my vote. After five days of talking, and nine days of thinking (seriously), I finally placed my vote, and suffice it to say it’s a fairly complicated one – you can see it on how I thought about it.

Before that, though, I thought I’d never get around to voting. The polling place for CLA and COE has been moved to the area near the football field entrance, in between Miguel and Velasco, without much announcements. It took me a little wonder noticing why the shirts aren’t around SJ Walk this morning; apparently they have all moved to the other entrance to the Miguel building, near the photocopiers and the walkway to Gokongwei. If anything, people were compelled to send out a text brigade to tell everyone of the changes. While I was talking to candidate Mara Navarro, that’s what she was doing.

Somehow, today was also the day when so many people came by. It could simply be my timing – I was there from noon, after coming from RADIPRO rehearsals – or it could be because people might be getting lost, and the CLA is such a big college. I guess it takes a lot of convincing to get them voting – friendly connections did work, in this case, to get the awareness a notch higher. So far, they sort of have.

Working with another electioneering definition

If you thought that with the elections come a refreshing view of the world – in short, none of what you’ve been seeing for the past week – well, it’s not exactly the case.

You may have been surprised to see that Santugon hasn’t taken down their streamers along SJ Walk. Even more, Tapat found themselves putting theirs back up on their side of the frequented corridor. And, despite my efforts to keep their respective pamphlets – they know me, nevertheless, so it’s sort of pointless – they’re the ones who are brandishing them out. They had almost all of the benches at SJ Walk, until Melai Prado, an arts staffer for The Lasallian, took their reserved bench and resumed giving away planners.

Reena Collado had that quickly explained for me. What can be considered as electioneering has been changed: now only verbal electioneering can be counted as an offense.