ATENEO TASK Force (ATF) 2013 brought its work for the midterm national elections to a close with its fourth and final phase, voters’ mobilization.

Parallel Count, ATF 2013’s last voters’ mobilization project, was held last May 15 to countercheck the official vote count of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

The project was done in partnership with the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), The Ateneo Assembly and the Sanggunian.

Parallel count volunteers, 180 of whom were Ateneans, sorted and encoded election returns, then compared them to the transmission results from the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines.

Prior to the auditing of election returns, various projects and programs were also organized during the summer as part of ATF 2013’s push for clean and honest elections.

“We were able to gather 200 strong volunteers [for the fourth phase]. It’s more than double what we had in 2010,” said incoming ATF 2013 Head Rob Copuyoc.

ATF 2013 aimed to engage Atenean participation in the elections through a yearlong master plan with four phases: voters’ registration, voters’ education, mock elections and voters’ mobilization.

Through the four phases, the task force attempted to get the student body aware of and actively involved in the national elections within the bounds of the school.

Getting to know the candidates

In the months leading up to the elections, ATF 2013 hosted forums for its second phase, voters’ education.

According to outgoing ATF 2013 Head Ian Agatep, the voters’ education phase was focused on “getting the students to understand what the elections mean and what does voting actually mean.”

The three senatorial forums co-hosted by ATF 2013 were all geared towards this goal. They also allowed Ateneans to get to know the senatorial candidates.

ATF 2013 co-organized “Sabay sa Bayan,” a senatorial forum with seven of the 33 candidates present.

In attendance were Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV, Teodoro “Teddy” Casiño, John Carlos “JC” de los Reyes, Ernesto Maceda, Milagros “Mitos” Magsaysay, Grace Poe and Christian Señeres.

The forum, held on February 8, was covered by media outlets and became a Philippine trending topic on Twitter with the hashtag #SabaySaBayan. The forum was held in Henry Lee Irwin Theater.

Meanwhile, six senatorial candidates attended “Town Hall,” another senatorial forum done in collaboration with PPCRV and Solar News held on March 6 at the Leong Hall auditorium.

Present were Magsaysay, Greco Belgica, Rizalito David, Ramon Montaño, Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito and Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri.

The said candidates answered questions from panelists and audience members, discussed national issues and participated in an open forum.

The last forum, Yahoo!’s “Purple Thumb,” was held last April 23 at Escaler Hall.

It featured senatorial candidates Belgica, Maceda and Magsaysay, who talked about their platforms and discussed their stands on various national issues.

All of the aforementioned senatorial forums were also organized in partnership with the Sanggunian, The Ateneo Assembly, the Ateneo School of Government and Jesuit-founded organization Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB).

Agatep, Copuyoc and Sabay sa Bayan Head Aika Rey all agreed that the forums were the highest point of ATF’s operations.

“A lot of Ateneans attended [Sabay sa Bayan], I think around 1,200. [That’s] even more than the capacity of the Irwin Theater,” Rey said.

“We got really nice feedback about the forum, and a lot of Ateneans actually asked if there will be another forum, which we did [have],” she added, referring to Town Hall.

Copuyoc also said that more Ateneans became engaged in ATF’s efforts after the media took notice of the senatorial forums.

Other projects

Aside from the forums, ATF 2013 also organized other projects over the summer to hype up the elections among Ateneans.

ATF 2013 worked with Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) and held a talk on basic election procedures and common election violations last May 6 in the Ching Tan Room.

Lente representative Karl Libangco explained that his organization had gone to different provinces to inform Filipinos of the proper voting processes and rules.

ATF 2013 also partnered with SLB for Gabay Halalan, a “call center” for election-related inquiries that operated from April 22 to May 13 in CTC-313.

Student volunteers for Gabay Halalan answered voters’ questions and received reports on election violations and vote buying.

In an interview with The GUIDON at the venue, Agatep said that Gabay Halalan was made to push for Atenean engagement with regard to the elections.

Engaging the student body

For every national election since 2007, ATF has set up its four phases to prepare students for the coming elections.

In Phase 1, voters’ registration, ATF helps first-time voters register.

Phase 2, voters’ education, is composed of forums aimed to inform Ateneans of the senatorial candidates’ platforms, as well as the election process in general.

The third phase, mock elections, aims to determine which senatorial candidates

Ateneans are planning to vote for.

The final phase, voters’ mobilization, is ATF’s final effort to get students to be engaged in the elections and vote.

With regard to ATF 2013, Agatep said that while there were people passionate about engaging the student body in the elections, there were also people whose volunteer activity ceased in the middle of the yearlong process.

“For the first phase of Voters’ Registration, the good thing was everyone was on board then,” Agatep said.

Despite the enthusiasm of the ATF 2013 team, the first phase did not prove to be as successful as they would have liked.

“What happened was [that] we were only able to have a few people registered,” Agatep added in a mix of English and Filipino.

Better planning needed

According to Copuyoc, things might have turned out better for ATF 2013 had they planned better.

“If we had offices help us in the same way that they’re helping us now [with the fourth phase, voters’ mobilization], I think there would have been a lot more Ateneans who would have registered,” he said.

Political science sophomore Kjerrimyr Andres thinks ATF 2013’s impact varies per Atenean student. “But as a whole, [ATF 2013’s projects] made them care a lot more about [our] country’s affairs,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rey said that aside from planning and getting more invested volunteers involved, effective promotions played an important role in ATF 2013’s operations.

“It’s not enough that you release posters and post tarps on EDSA walk and on lamp posts. It’s really important that you get to campaign it very well, in such a way that you… invite everyone personally and get to the heart of the people,” Rey said.

“It makes them realize [that they] really have to do this. It would be better if you have better promotions for them to really understand the need for this,” she added.

Andres agreed. “Promotions should be more aggressive so that Ateneans, as well as outsiders, will be more enticed to participate in the programs of ATF 2013,” he said.

Legal management senior Elaine Marcilla also said ATF 2013 should improve its promotions for future projects.

“I was not aware that they were the ones behind those projects. They should have been more visible and more aggressive with their promotions,” she said.

According to Copuyoc, ATF will push for voters’ education as early as now in time for the 2016 national elections.

“We realized after talking with SLB, an NGO that also advocates for the elections, that we shouldn’t cram all this information to people once election year comes. It’s a lot more important that it’s always in their minds,” Copuyoc said.