Let us even up the chances for winning

With the new automated polls, many people are going to encounter some problems when it comes to voting for senatorial candidates. This is because of the sheer number of candidates to choose from, officially pegged at 61.

Unlike the manual voting of old, where a voter may memorize and write down the names of his favorite senatorial candidates, the new automated polls require the voter to go over a list of over 60 candidates and shade the oval figures before their names.

A voter can choose to vote for exactly 12 senators or choose to vote less than that number. But he must never vote in excess of 12 because the machines are programmed to reject those that go over 12, thus invalidating that portion of the ballot.

Now, if you are like me, you probably have a few senatorial candidates you earnestly want to win but who, for one reason or another, do not seem to enjoy the likelihood of winning. Well, despair not, fellow lovers of the underdogs, for I have come upon the solution to make them win.

The solution is simple — vote only for the candidates you feel have little chances of winning. Do not vote anymore for the sure winners because they are probably going to win anyway, with or without your vote. It is the underdogs who need every vote they can get.

Here is how it works. A vote for an underdog takes him up by one vote. A vote withdrawn from a favorite takes him down by another. If enough votes are given to underdogs and enough are withdrawn from favorites, a balancing out occurs and the chances of winning are evened out.

If, on the other hand, while voting for the underdogs you still vote for the favorites, then you will only be entrenching those favorites in the higher rankings, making them ever more difficult to dislodge from their already lofty perches.

Remember that the frontrunners are frontrunners because they are the favorites of other people too. Even without your vote, other people will still be voting for them. Including the favorites in the ballots of everyone is the surest recipe to crowd out the underdogs.

For example, if a candidate whom you truly want to win is managing no more than, say, the 10th place in the surveys, then he is in the danger zone and could be dislodged from the magic 12 by any of the next three candidates occupying the 13th to 15th places.

What you have to do is to remember to vote for him. Having done that, you can actually forget to vote for those occupying the top six places in the surveys. If there is a way to level the playing field, this is the way to do it.

This is particularly important for Cebuanos, who make up a huge chunk of the national population and therefore deserve to have a bigger representation in the Senate. Unfortunately, it seems that only Serge Osmeña is included among the favorites to win.

Other Cebuanos, like Lito Osmeña and Dodong Maambong, also deserve to win seats in the Senate but are outside the Magic 12. I am not going to ask you to vote for them because that is a choice you have to make. All I am saying is these are Cebuanos who could benefit from my formula.

This formula should go some way in finally getting rid of the so-called bandwagon mentality that has so obfuscated the mindset of Filipino voters for a long time. By going for the favorites and the popular, we have been sending to the Senate some of our biggest misfits.

Enough of the Senate being the circus that it has become. The Senate is not a platform from which to launch loftier political ambitions solely on the basis of the ability to whip up the trivial and grandstand. Let us restore the Senate to its dignity and honor.