CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature

Election is the means by which the people choose their government officials for definite
and fixed periods and to whom they entrust, for the time being, as their representatives in the
exercise of the powers of the government. There are three kinds of election in the Philippines: 1.)
National, 2.) Local, and 3.) Special. In a local election, we elect government officials in the
different political units of the Philippines: the provinces, cities, and municipalities. Elective
positions are for 1.) Governors, 2.) Vice Governors, 3.) Provincial Board members, 4.)
City/Municipal Mayors, 5.) City/Municipal Vice Mayors, and 6.) City/Municipal Councilors. This
also includes election of officials in the House of Congress who are the called the Senators and the
Representatives. Local election is usually done every three years. It is a national election, when
we include the election of the President and the Vice President. The election of the President and
the Vice President is usually done every six years. A special election is done to elect Barangay and
Sangguniang Kabataan officials. It is also done in special cases like for example to elect the
replacement of an elected official who died or was permanently disabled before his or her term
expires. It may be done simultaneously with any national or local election or otherwise as
scheduled by Congress. The 1987 Philippine Constitution provides that the national and the local
elections should be done every 2nd Monday of May every six and three years respectively. This
has been the schedule since the creation of the latest Philippine Constitution and no law could be
passed changing said schedule since it will be unconstitutional. The Commission on Election
(COMELEC) is the instrumentality of the government which is charged of administering elections
in the Philippines. It is one of the Constitutional Commissions created by the 1987 Constitution;
therefore, it has the status of being an independent body. (Election in the Philippines, 2010)

In the article of Gatdula (2018) entitled, Raise the voting age to 25, he stated there that
people habitually view voting as a right. He recommended that the voting age should be raised to
25. The reason is common sense and science. Mental Health Daily reports, “although brain
development is subject to significant individual variation, most experts suggest that the brain is
fully developed by age 25.”
 Moreover, he point out that “the fact that our brains aren’t developed until the mid-20s
means that ‘legal adults’ (those age 18+) are allowed to make adult decisions, without fully mature
brains. Someone who is 18 may make riskier decisions than someone in their mid-20s in part due
to lack of experience, but primarily due to an underdeveloped brain.”

Nonetheless, according to the Philippine Constitution, “suffrage may be exercised by all

citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are at least 18 years of age, and
who shall have resided in the Philippines for at least one year, and in the place wherein they
propose to vote, for at least six months immediately preceding the election.”

At the end of his article, he called for a change to raise the voting age to 25. As political
author Matt Walsh argues, “the idea is to open up voting to people who are full, contributing
members of society. The majority of people under the age of 25 have never had a job. They’ve
never supported themselves. They’ve never even paid a bill or filed their taxes. They know very
little about how the country actually works. And they contribute little if anything to it financially,
which means they are going into the voting booth and deciding what happens to other people’s
money. They have no skin in the game themselves.” A more mature electorate could only be good
for the country; for which a bit of aging could certainly help.

The right to vote and run for public office in an election are important political rights of all
citizens guaranteed by the constitution. To give meaningful expression to the rights of suffrage in
the context of representative government, citizens must be able to participate freely in competitive
elections. Elections are not only occasions for leadership change and renewal, but they are also
political landmarks showing character of change. Every time we hold elections to choose
candidates who will work for our well-being, most often, these become an exercise of futility.
(Zulueta, 2011).

Election is the formal process of selecting a person for public office or of accepting or
rejecting a political proposition by voting. Elections were used as early in history as Ancient
Greece and Ancient Rome, and throughout the medieval period to select rulers such as the Holy
Roman Emperor and the Pope. (Encyclopedia Britanica, 2015)
 According to Paris (2019) in her article entitled, “Youth and elections: Is there such a thing
as a 'youth vote'?”, she stated there that around 31% of registered voters for the 2019 midterm
elections are aged 18-30 wherein Millennials and Gen Z (Generation Z) or those born in the mid-
’90s and early 2000s comprise 18,847,230 of the 61,843,750 voters across the country. In 2016,
there were 18,396,615 voters in this age bracket, accounting for 33% of the 54,363,844 voters.

She pointed out that there education is a factor that affects the perceptions about voting
rights of the youth today. Aimee Bautista, an assistant professor at the University of the
Philippines-Diliman Political Science department, said that university life is one of the main
factors of youth politicization. Bautista has done research on youth perceptions of the Sangguniang
Kabataan, as well as the likelihood of university students participating in electoral politics.

Other studies also seem to point to college education as an important factor in political and
civic engagement. In a 2013 study by Willhelmina Cabo of the University of the Philippines (UP)
National College of Public Administration and Governance, young university students were seen
as politically active when encouraged to volunteer for campaign finance monitoring in the lead-up
to the 2013 elections.

A 2018 Far Eastern University Public Policy Center study, “Does Gen Z Care?” found that
“many Gen Z students are not yet very much inclined to participate in political and civic affairs.”
Gen Z would include young people who are voting for the first time in the coming polls.

Many are also “undecided when it comes to the most controversial issues of the day,”
according to the study. However, the study found that education, specifically “college experience,”
could instill greater social awareness, or at least train young people for better civic engagement.

This seems to be true for the 2019 elections as well. In February, students from the
University of Cebu-Banilad campus urged fellow students to vote intelligently by doing research
on candidates’ track records. In a 2017 survey by the Philippine Statistics Authority, 9% of
Filipinos aged 6-24 were recorded to be out of school. 83% of the youth surveyed were between
16 and 24 years old. Many are out of school because of family problems, lack of interest, and
financial concerns. The most important variables affecting voting preferences are education,
religion, and to a certain extent, class. But even these variables also shift depending on issues of
the day

Republic Act No. 9369, which amended the Automated Election law, was passed on
Jan.23, 2007 “to encourage transparency, credibility, fairness and accuracy of elections.” Section
6 of the law states the minimum system capabilities that the automated election system must have.
Among those is the provision for a voter verified paper audit trail. The system should also provide
the voter a system of verification to find out whether or not the machine has registered his choice.
The law also requires a system that would provide supporting documentation for verifying the
correctness of reported election results, and provide for the safekeeping, storing and archiving of
physical or paper resource used in the election process. (Atienza, A. 2016)

Related Study

The study, Level of Awareness of Aetas of their Fundamental Rights is focused on how
well the Aetas in Barangay Tongko, Tayabas, Quezon are aware of their social, economic and
political rights as prescribed by our social laws from the perspective of a modernizing society and
implications of this level of awareness to Republic Act 8371 also known as the Indigenous
People’s Rights Act (IPRA). Basically a descriptive-survey research, the study used interview with
purposively selected Aeta respondents 18 years old and above. Also, a questionnaire that elicited
the socio-economic profile of the respondents and their level of awareness and their views on their
fundamental social, economic and political rights was administered. The findings of the study point
to the high level of awareness of the rights of the Aetas in the barangay surveyed. Moreover, they
could articulate their beliefs and views when it comes to the exercise of their basic rights. They
expect the government to guarantee their basic rights, specifically on the right to food, shelter,
education, health, job opportunities, and suffrage among others. It is recommended that
government be more responsive in guaranteeing the rights of the Aetas through effective measures.
They suggest seminars on labor and workers’ rights and better housing programs. (Lawas and
Gonzales, 2012)
 This research, entitled Psychographics Study on the Voting Behavior of the Cebuano
Electorate identified the attributes of a presidentiable/vice presidentiable that the Cebuano
electorates preferred and prioritized as follows: 1) has a heart for the poor and the needy; 2) can
provide occupation; 3) has a good personality/character; 4) has good platforms; and 5) has no issue
of corruption. It was done through face-to-face interview with Cebuano registered voters randomly
chosen using a stratified sampling technique.

Canonical Correlation Analysis revealed that there was a significant difference as to the
respondents’ preferences on the characteristic traits of the presidential and vice presidential
candidates across respondents with respect to age, gender, educational attainment, and economic
status. The strength of the relationships were identified to be good in age and educational
attainment, moderate in gender and weak in economic status with respect to the characteristics of
the presidentiable.

Also, there was a good relationship in age bracket, moderate relationship in gender and
educational attainment, and weak relationship in economic status with respect to the characteristics
of a vice presidentiable. The strength of the said relationships were validated by the established
predictive models. Moreover, perceptual mapping of the multivariate correspondence analysis
determined the groupings of preferred characteristic traits of the presidential and vice presidential
candidates across age, gender, educational attainment and economic status. A focus group
discussion was conducted and it validated the survey results. It enumerated more characteristics
that explained further the voting behavior of the Cebuano electorates. (Ereno etal, 2016)

A 2018 Far Eastern University Public Policy Center study of Punongbayan, “Does Gen Z
Care?” that aimed to determine the students’ motivation and their views on current social and
political issues in the country, found that “many Gen Z students are not yet very much inclined to
participate in political and civic affairs.” Gen Z would include young people who are voting for
the first time in the coming polls.

Many are also “undecided when it comes to the most controversial issues of the day,”
according to the study. However, the study found that education, specifically “college experience,”
could instill greater social awareness, or at least train young people for better civic engagement.
 It was stated there that 71 percent of the students never worked on local and national
campaign, 24 percent never publicly took a stand and another 17 percent never discussed politics
at all. Furthermore, the study showed that 81 percent of the students think of the importance of
getting a better job after graduation, entering graduate school and raising a family later on instead
of discussing politics. (Punongbayan, 2018).

In the study titled, “Youth and Political Participation in the Philippines: Voices and Themes
from a Democracy Project” there appears to be a prevailing perception that the generation of young
people today are uninterested if not apathetic to politics. But is that really the case? Are today’s
young generation truly disengaged from politics? This paper focuses on this question, drawing
from a democracy project in the Philippines that involved young university students as volunteers
in an election monitoring exercise. A content analysis of focus group data and reflection papers of
students about their subjective experiences, feelings, insights and views regarding their
participation in the project and politics in general belie the conventional wisdom that the young
are a politically impassive and indifferent generation. The youths are interested in political life
around them and hold critical views about the behavior of politicians and political candidates. And
even as they recognize the weaknesses and deficits in the political system, the youths are interested
in political participation not just in voting but in other engagements that support democracy and
good government. The paper concludes that today’s youths are a promising generation of political
activists whose energies, enthusiasm and aspirations can be mobilized and harnessed to strengthen
democratic processes and achieve their aspirations for what they call ‘good society,’ ‘good
government’ and ‘good politics.’ (Cabo, 2018)

Title: Awareness of Selected Residents of Purok Sampaguita, Barangay Domoit on their

Suffrage Rights