Something’s been puzzling me the last two weeks.

Immediately after the elections, the Commission on Elections estimated that anywhere between 65 and 85 percent of registered voters had cast their ballots. (As an estimate, offered by a possibly innumerate Comelec chairman, the figure is too vague to be truly useful. Given 45 million voters, a 20-percent range means Benjamin Abalos could have been off by as many as 9 million voters.)

On the eve of the elections, the Comelec had forecast an 83-percent turnout, based on the 2004 vote.

This was, more or less, the “forecast” one could conclude from a Social Weather Stations survey, which found that 86 percent of survey respondents said they were likely to vote. It was this survey, too, which led me to conclude that Loren Legarda, consistently enjoying ratings of around 60 percent, would be the first person to earn over 20 million votes in Philippine election history.

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TOMORROW promises to be action-packed. A very personal account is by Galatea’s Favorite Sky, where she describes her ordeal as her boyfriend ended up hurriedly sent to Lanao. Indeed, it’s going to be All eyes on Lanao del Sur, as Alleba Politics points out. Going further,  Calling All Filipinos. Lanao Del Sur Needs You! Tingog.com says, while Patsada Karajaw says Dracula’s guarding the blood banks.

Sometimes in frustration, we end up hearing people say, extreme measures are called for. Violence and cheating are the problems, and the worst part is, the places where voting isn’t relatively clean and honest end up dragging down the rest.

1. If anyone dies in an election-related act of violence, should all the candidates be punished? Declare no elections, and install an OIC? Meaning, if you want civilian officials to lead your province, better conduct a campaign and an election without violence, otherwise it’s martial law for you until the province gets its act together?

2. If a precinct can’t produce and submit an ER within 24 hours of the polls closing, should the government declare sorry, better luck next time, we won’t count your votes because you couldn’t count your votes in time?

3. If the voters in Muslim Mindanao want to vote properly, but their leaders, in cooperation with national officials, keep screwing it up, is the solution, as follows?

But immediate solutions — or deterrents in time for future elections — can be put in place, said Basman, president of the Philippine Islamic Center for Moderate Muslims and of the Mindanao Research Institute.

He suggested that elections be held in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao ahead of the rest of the country, the way it is done for overseas and local absentee voters.

A purge of shady election officials in the local level can also be initiated by focusing the so-called “lifestyle check” on these individuals after an election, Basman said.

The saying goes, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” But if the price of winning is never so high, as to prevent winning at any costs, should the price then be: if you can’t play, nobody will win. Period. No exceptions. You can think about how you messed it up for three years, but until then, it’s martial law in your locality.

But then you see caffeine sparks and a news report shown on Australian TV, and you realize: hold on, who would enforce martial law?

Unless we say it is. That, apparently, is the administration coalition’s take on the 2007 mid-term elections.

The Senate contest is not a referendum on the Arroyo presidency, because, well, the administration has lost the majority of seats at stake. But the congressional and local races? They are a referendum because the administration won most of the positions at stake.

This “frame” is there for all to see, in a full-page ad that the administration coalition (that’s Lakas, Kampi, NPC, Liberal-Atienza wing, LDP, and PDSP) are running in tomorrow’s papers. It turns out that all coalition candidates had “offered a clear choice to the Filipino people” — including, I suppose, all those coalition candidates, such as Mark Lapid of Lakas and Baby Pineda of Kampi, who ran against each other.

Apart from the framing (another example: 2007 was “an election generally predicted as a referendum on the economic performance of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo” — nice, that subtle use of the dismal science), the advertisement is interesting for the lists it provides of the winning coalition candidates: 183 congressmen (including, ah, transplanted Bicolano Dato Arroyo); 64 governors (including Joey Salceda of Albay, who ran as an independent against an incumbent Lakas governor, another clear example of the “clear choice” the coalition offered the Filipino people); and 101 city mayors (including Charter change exponent Rep. Constantino Jaraula).

I will bet, however, that this ad will become more interesting around the third or fourth week of July, when jockeying for positions in the House will cause a few more of that quaint fruit, the balimbing, to fall from the tree.

JUST a quick thought. Whether anyone likes it or not, the next presidential campaign begins on June 30, 2007 when the new batch of senators join the 14th Congress. While the counting isn’t over, the top six or so senatorial rankings seem beyond dispute, and among them are some candidates being discussed as presidential aspirants. What does their senatorial victory tell us about their presidential prospects? I’ve linked the survey results graphs for each candidate.

1. Loren Legarda: Was her vote purely on her own merits, or a sympathy vote for 2004? And the real question is: even as the senatorial top-notcher, is the country prepared for another female president?

2. Chiz Escudero: Phenomenal popularity and a marvelously efficient campaign. The man to watch, particularly as the country’s going through one of its periodic generational shifts. But too young to be president?

3. Ping Lacson: He held his own, but didn’t make major gains. He proved he has a solid constituency that will vote for him, consistently. But there wasn’t any “cross-over,” and he hasn’t proven he can attract additional support.

4. Manny Villar: The biggest loser, in terms of his presidential prospects. A lackluster campaign, massive spending for ads but not enough bang for the buck; he hoped the Vice-President’s endorsement would help, but the Vice-President serves with an administration that got rejected in terms of the national vote. The Vice-President endorsed Ralph Recto, too, and it didn’t seem to help, either. And he has to retain the senate presidency.

Sometimes we can read too much into the “meaning” of a particular vote.

I found Raul Pangalangan’s last column, on the meaning of the Honasan-Trillanes vote, a provocative read. I especially thought this particular passage was right on the money.

By manipulating the various arms of government to harass its enemies and protect its own, the Arroyo government has weakened the rule of law. It has conditioned the people to look to end-results — stop corruption, improve education, expand health care, make housing more accessible — and be indifferent to the means, constitutional or not. It has lowered the bar, so to speak, that the law has placed to guard against extra-constitutional power grabs.

This weakening of the rule of law — “culture of impunity,” anyone? — must be counted as one of the main legacies of the Arroyo administration.

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Here’s something interesting from a May 19 Inquirer.net report:

ABS-CBN reporter Lynda Jumilla said the Comelec’s education and information division (EID) used to help reporters add up the figures. However, these were still unaudited results by the Comelec and, therefore, could not be considered official.

Jumilla also covered the 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2004 elections.

She said this was the first time that she added up the results of the COCs on her own without the EID’s help.

“They used to give us the running totals at a certain hour of the day. But those were still unaudited,” she said. “This time, if we rely on the Comelec to give us totals, we’ll get them tomorrow. By then, the story would be stale.”

Jumilla said she tried to be as careful as she could by listening intently to the canvassers read out the COC results. She said she would jot these down in her notebook and the tally sheet provided by a media officer, and countercheck her figures with other reporters….

If she makes a mistake, “I’m willing to point it out in my next story,” Jumilla said.

Comelec executive director Pio Jose Joson, who also chairs the canvassing supervisory committee, admitted that the poll body was slow in releasing the official results.

The above is a long explanation of this depressing detail:

(There is a huge tally board at the gate of the Philippine International Convention Center. But it only showed the running total of COCs from the overseas voting.)

Basically, the article reveals that reporters have to do work they shouldn’t be expected to do: accounting. Anyone who’s seen video of Congress during elections in presidential years, will remember that a giant blackboard is a prominent feature of the official canvassing. You’d expect the official canvassing for the senate to feature the same handy reference for everyone, media and the public alike. But apparently not, and this only adds to the lack of trust people have in the system.

Meanwhile Philippine Commentary examines the Comelec count versus Namfrel quick counts. Promises to be a thought-provoking series.

MUCH as I love the Inquirer.net electoral map, we have a long way to go. In Pollster.com, which focuses on survey results, see their  2006 House Race and 2006 Senate Race survey maps.

For actual election results, see this unusually-designed map showing the gains and losses of the parties, for the US House of Representatives in the 2006 race.

A particularly interesting show-and-tell is by M.E.J. Newman, who looks at how to present election results for both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and in a way that shows the relative populations of various areas.

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THIS is a question I think we ought to consider this early on.

In a democracy, it’s the will of the majority that decides to vote, that counts.

The other interesting thing is, is it premature to write the obituary on the command vote? In 1998, I wrote that as far as presidential elections were concerned, the days of party machinery determining the outcome were over (the aberration would prove to be 2004: and that was a questionable election).
This election marks 100 years since we’ve had lower house elections; and 66 years since the first national senatorial election. We are only a young democracy in terms of our personal memories.

I’ve put together a summary of the elections from 1907-2004, and it is in the context of all these past races that the present one should be considered. Please take a look (unfortunately, 1971 is a kind of “ghost year,” I’ve never been able to find the House results for that year, though we have the Senate results).

(Erratum: a reader in my blog corrected the data for the 1951 senatorial elections: it was a complete defeat for the incumbent’s party; something pointed out in an Inquirer editorial as the only instance a total opposition victory in the Senate has been achieved; so for the data, the Senate results for 1951 should show 8 NP elected and 0 LP; the above’s been fixed)

In terms of the House of Representatives, the administration in power has not been the same as the party controlling the House only four times in our history, and all three were presidential election years. All three were unusual elections: the incumbents lost, though the party infrastructure the losing incumbents had carefully nurtured survived (until raided by the successor):

In 1953, when Magsaysay won the presidency for the opposition NP, while the administration LP kept control of the House.
In 1961, when Macapagal won the presidency for the opposition LP, while the administration NP kept control of the House.
In 1965, when Marcos won the presidency for the opposition NP, while the administration LP kept control of the House.
In 1998, when Estrada won the presidency for the opposition LAMMP, while the administration Lakas kept control of the House.

All four presidents engaged in the immediate courting and raiding of the previous administration party, and quickly established a “new” majority for themselves.

But for non-presidential election years, no incumbent has ever lost control of the House, and so it’s no achievement to retain control of it in a mid-term election. You could say no administration has ever lost the House in 100 years, that’s simply how local politics works (incumbents have lost the presidency though).

In terms of the Senate, from 1941 to 1951, bloc voting was in place and ensured administration control of the Senate in every election. After 1951, bloc voting was abolished and the results began to be mixed, with one exception: 1955, the Magsaysay mid-terms, when his massive popularity secured a complete senate victory for his slate, also the last time ever that a party secured a complete victory in the senate. Even Marcos at his most formidable, in 1967 and 1969, and even with the anti-Marcos backlash in 1971, neither party could secure a shut-out.

In terms of mid-term elections being a referendum on the sitting administration, the score cards of various presidents is as follows:

Roxas, 1947: 7 out of 8, very impressive
Quirino, 1951: 8 out of 8, very impressive (but led to abolition of bloc voting) All 8 of his candidates lost, the worst performance by an administration, ever.
Magsaysay, 1955: 8 out of 8, hugely impressive and unmatched since
Garcia, 1959: 5 out of 8, unimpressive, a sign of defeat to come
Macapagal, 1963: 4 out of 8, a sign of defeat to come
Marcos, 1967: 7 out of 8, very impressive
Marcos, 1971: 2 out of 8, worst showing of an incumbent; panic time
Ramos, 1995: 10 out of 13, very impressive

What sets apart the pre-1972 senatorial midterms, from the midterms since 1987, is of course that presidents prior to 1972 could run for reelection, and so the midterms also served as a test of how the incumbent would do when seeking reelection. Roxas and Magsaysay were widely expected to secure reelection in their time: but both died before they could do so. Marcos, who matched the Roxas performance in his mid-term, became the first president since 1941 to win reelection.

Since 1987, what the mid-term determines is whether the president will be a lame duck or not. Ramos’s strong senate showing helped propel charter change efforts; 2001 would have been the mid-term referendum on Estrada, but instead became a referendum on Edsa Dos; now the 2007 elections will determine if President Arroyo will be a lame duck or not.

Administration senator Ralph Recto has a rather remarkable take on the steady rise in what are called, in police-speak, election-related violent incidents, or ERVIs.

On election day, in a telephone interview with senior reporter Gil Cabacungan Jr., he said:

“I believe that part of the reason for the violence is that some unscrupulous politicians were not prepared for the campaign and had to make up for the lost time because they thought there would be no elections this year.”

Say that again?

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THE PPCRV says there were the standard electoral woes: disfranchisement, electioneering and vote buying. But “beyond the usual,” I think most media people will be trying to come to grips with the staggering numbers elections -and trying to manipulate them- involves.

Just a while ago I did a little show-and-tell on GMA7’s election coverage, where I tried to tie together last Friday’s Newsbreak article on potential cheating strategies, with reports filtering in from the ground.

The first point involved a statement made earlier today by Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos, where he said turnout in some regions reached 85% or so (though an online report I saw quoted him as saying it was 70-80%). Inquirer publisher Isagani Yambot said his hunch was that it was closer to 70% nationwide (but that’s just a hunch). This figure is important because it’s the first nationwide figure people have, to compare their personal experience during election day, with what our officials claim actually took place. Prospero Pichay, who was a guest in a segment prior to mine, said he thought it was closer to 65%-70%, saying it’s a midterm election, and that the general turnout during such elections is law.

Not so. I pointed out that we can compare whatever turns out to be the voter’s turnout this year, with past years. A handout I received earlier that day from a group of statisticians (claiming the 2005 National Statistical Coordination Board Statistical Yearbook as their source) presented the following. It’s the percentage of registered voters, who actually voted in past elections:

May 2004: 81.4% actual voters
May 2001: 76.3% actual voters
May 1998: 86.4% actual voters
May 1995: 70.7% actual voters
May 1992:  75.5% actual voters

So 80% is believable, if we assume a high turnout for this election. Except I kept hearing during the coverage that reports from the ground kept mentioning low turnouts…

Either way, whether a low turnout or a high turnout nationwide, the next problem I brought up is something I blogged about earlier today. It’s the interesting figures the Inquirer.net Eleksyon 2007 Map brought out: large increases in registered voters in some areas, and a decrease in other areas, with the increases remarkably similar to administration bailiwick areas and the drop in generally-acknowledged opposition areas.

I hope more numerically-inclined people will crunch these numbers and see if my suspicions (my suspicions are, the map numbers combined with the Newsbreak article’s contents match, and remarkably so) have a basis.

But the main point is that for the average citizen, the election’s over. For many, many others, they’ve just begun. The first big sign of whether the pundits and analysts are on to something, will be the exit poll published around noontime tomorrow. The best line of the night came from Pichay: “well, the election’s over, and no one can change the results.”

Oh? The announced failure of election in parts of Mindanao just freed up a chunk -what is it, 60,000 votes?- that can swing the election for the bottom-ranking senatorial candidates.