Troubleshooting Filipino Overseas Voting

Why the numbers are low and what could be done to increase it

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

While washing dishes, I overheard this NPR podcast about problems in election ballot design and the poor outcomes that result from it (e.g. spoiled to disqualified votes!). I recently cast my vote for the 2019 Philippines Senator elections and party-list. This year, the competition for elected posts is intense because it would mean the difference between a significant opposition party or more pro-government legislative body.

My ballot came in the mid-April and I promptly went to the embassy in the Netherlands to cast my vote on Good Friday, April 19. I was not sure if the office was even open but I had another errand and I wanted to try anyway. To my surprise, the office was closed for consular services but open to submit ballots! I rang the bell and a hardworking staff member, let’s call him Phil, came down the steps and brought down a white acrylic drop box. It was a quick transaction but I struck a conversation about their problems with handling elections in the Netherlands. The following are excerpts of our exchange and the problems confronting the embassy in their work abroad.

Background. The Netherlands is not a vote-rich country. In the last presidential elections, only about 3,013 are registered to vote and only about 2/3 vote. Phil estimates that there may be up to 10,000 Filipinos, excluding seafarers, who are eligible to vote but don’t. This doesn’t seem significant but if you take similar destination countries (e.g. China, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, among others) the numbers are significant to election results. These country figures reflect the overall discrepancy between actual Filipinos living and working abroad and voter turnout. In the last 2016 presidential elections, there were 1.8 million registered to vote overseas. However, only 31% actually voted, or less than half a million. If you compare this to the official statistics of overseas workers in 2018 at 2.3 million, and against figures of Filipinos living abroad at 10.2 million (a figure that has not been updated since 2013! Therefore, not reliable, but used here for illustration purposes), the voting outcomes are poor. While the 2016 elections registered the highest participation since the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2004, the poor participation indicate structural problems and opportunities for behavioral intervention.

Registration Voter Database. Registration apparently is a complicated process. The embassy can only register Filipinos as a voter during the designated period by the COMELEC (Commission on Elections). The embassy can only act if they are deputized by the COMELEC to accomplish certain tasks, like registration. Otherwise, the embassy has no power, even to include their own registration lists of recognized citizens who are eligible to vote. Therefore, if you arrive at a third country and you miss this period, you will definitely not be able to vote. One reason is that embassies are sent a fixed number of ballots depending on the number of registrations. They only hand out extras to the seafarerers who may have unpredictable landing visits. Indeed, the embassies sometimes use these ballots to allow drop-ins to vote on election day.

Actionable Insights:

1. COMELEC should have special policies for overseas voting conditions. Local embassies have little power to enact their role as COMELEC officers. Therefore, the policies should equally be flexible to handle unpredictable local conditions in third countries.
2. COMELEC needs to deputize the local embassies a longer registration period — ideally six months to a year before the election date. This allows citizens/residents time to register, including weekends.
3. Land-based citizens who have resettled are no different behaviorally with their seafaring compatriots. Both groups are unpredictable and difficult to track. The extra ballots is an easy fix that should also legitimately cover both groups.
4. Voter registration is hindered by distance from the local embassy. For now, there is no online means of registration. The system is antiquated. COMELEC should at least allow mail registration coupled with other online means of authentication, like a simple video call especially in countries where these media are relatively safer and reliable.

Embassy Registration. Registration to vote is different from the basic registration at the embassy. Ideally, every citizen that arrives in the Netherlands, should register their presence to the embassy in case of any emergencies. However, an activist friend from Switzerland, said that an illegal status in the third country prevents a lot of citizens from becoming legible to the embassy and claim their election rights as Filipino citizens. The embassy is not compelled to require every citizen to register and has few resources to follow up and keep track of long-term Filipinos in the Netherlands. Phil suggests that like in other countries, a strong local Filipino expat community is necessary to support the embassy to mobilize expat Filipinos.

Actionable Insights:

1. Local activist Filipinos should include voting registration at the embassy as an essential corpus of their local campaigns (and not just during the election season). This does not just encourage individual safety for those registered as dual citizens but also keep them in an active mailing list for the election season.
2. Once the official registration period is ongoing, this same communication chain should be activated (fiesta, church, or sport events) and become opportunities for people to sign up.
3. A simple tech intervention would be designing a dynamic database or a simple Excel file that syncs passport mailing lists that can help with future voter registration. A simple data consent of the citizen for this purpose should be cleared first.
4. Voter registration should be an opt-out option for Filipinos who transacts with the local embassy, especially for passport renewals. Currently, the embassy has little power to use their registration lists for purposes of any election activity. One COMELEC policy should allow the embassy to collect a valid mailing address to send ballots to citizens.

Of course, this does not mean that people will actually register or want to register. A key problem that comes up is their cultural integration. Though many have dual citizenship, these people are integrated in Dutch households with less contact with other Filipinos, especially outside of North and South Holland provinces. Integration and long distance are just two of numerous other challenges that hinder registration at the embassy for the sole purpose of voter registration.

One way out is to advocate for voting as part of the larger framework of overseas Filipino citizenship identity. Pinoy citizenship awareness are embodied in two processes: namely, the passport and dual citizenship. Voting, a periodic behavioral process is a much more fleeting process, that can be taken away from you and requires active engagement. Since it is not a permanent state, Filipino overseas participants tend to be low.

To overcome this low citizenship behavior, the embassy needs to incorporate voter registration as part of Filipino citizenship-hood. One constant contact with an expat citizen is through passport renewal. The embassy needs to tap this opportunity to register people to an active mailing list or directly as voters when they apply and renew their document and dual citizenship. This requires a radical approach from the COMELEC to deputize embassies to open voter registration indefinitely for overseas voter registration. A one-stop shop approach will increase registration and hopefully, convert citizens to voters. Once this is made possible, voting becomes part of Filipino citizenship awareness and slowly introduced as an important concept and right.

Voting. The behavioral conversion from registration to voting is equally tough. Phil says that the common problem is the change of address wherein mailed ballot forms are returned with no forwarding address. This leads to the embassy resorting to posting names online at their website! There are several problems to this solution. One, the list is not necessarily mobile friendly. Second, unless you are already an active citizen, no one will bother to go to the embassy webpage to check their name on the list. This leaves the problem of how to get the more passive citizens to actually vote. Third, the issue of privacy comes to mind. However, given the problem and little solution, I can see why the embassy will simply put your name out there.

There has been a long historical problem with the hacking of government databases. The most prominent was the COMELEC data dump in which the database was hacked and all voters’ information have been posted online! Shocking but true. The Philippine government has poor technical capabilities that even government portals are regularly hacked or don’t use the official address, e.g. philembassy.nl instead of the .gov.ph adress! This scenario means that the possibility of online registration or voting securely is next to impossible. Citizens thereby are locked in an analogue system that does not fully capture the problems of the embassy and the citizens in third countries.

There are other reasons for voting failure, including late receipts of ballots through mail and disqualified ballots (the design of ballots are a separate issue). However, the latter is rarely a problem. Since there are so few voters, Phil says the official count is easy, relaxed, and done quickly at the embassy. According to Phil, it doesn’t really matter if you check, mark your ballots with an X, or shade the boxes. Also, you can leave numbers blank or cross them out as options. The lack of clear instructions are significant design issues that have greater repercussions locally than overseas. That said, it is a problem but not as serious for countries with low voting populations. To safeguard the process, Phil says that you can attend the local vote tallying on May 13th as observer (unless you are an official COMELEC vote watcher!). This means you can only watch but not advise or comment!

To close, I surmise that voting is less of an essential component of Filipino citizenship. This is a challenge to our education system but also to our activist campaigns. It is not enough to protest and to rally but to mobilize a more effective voter registration overseas guidelines that include continuous voter registration in embassies as the first step. We are still a long way to go to make Philippine elections user-centric!

Don’t forget to mail out your ballots now, visit your embassy, or vote early on May 13th.