A day before the start of the overseas absentee voting (OAV), Filipinos in Taiwan are not keen on mailing their votes for the 2022 elections via mail or post, saying it is prone to manipulation.
Opposition to postal voting for the 2022 polls flooded the Facebook post of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO), which announced that it would dispatch the voting packets to the registered address of all registered voters in Taiwan.
The Facebook post that was shared over a thousand times got mostly angry reactions.
Facebook user Mark Luke said he was against postal voting because this year's elections are an essential event in the country's history.
"We will protect our right and our vote!" he said.
Louise Mayola said Filipinos in Taiwan are willing to "sacrifice our time and spend money just to cast our votes."
Julius Mantes said he opposes postal voting because it is prone to manipulation.
"Prone to manipulation. Before n'yo maipasok sa machine, nabasa niyo na ang votes namin (Before you even input our votes in the machine, you already know the content of our ballot)," he said.
"No to last-minute change!!!" he added.
Postal voting is not the first concern of overseas Filipinos (OFs) in the 2022 elections. In New York, particularly in New York, OFs expressed concern that they may not be able to vote or their vote may not make the election day due to postponement in the final testing and sealing of vote-counting machines.
According to Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Assistant Secretary Eduardo Meñez, voters in New York have a whole month to cast their votes.
" will need to check specifics of delay and how many posts affected. However, our voters overseas do have one month to vote compared to the one day of voting here, so they have opportunities to choose when to vote," he said on April 7.
"We appreciate their enthusiasm and vigilance and hope that this will result in higher voter turnout percentages for overseas voting," he added.