Church bells pealed across the Philippines Monday morning to mark the beginning of voting in national elections, and Catholic bishops began the day with a special 6 a.m. Mass in Manila’s cathedral to pray that the elections would be fair and peaceful.
By the end of the day with the official election commission reporting a voter turnout of around 75 percent, their prayers may have been answered.
For the first time, a computerized vote-counting system is being used, in an effort to stamp out the vote-rigging that has caused chaos in the past. Formerly, weeks could pass between election day and final results, as ballots were hand-counted and the results carried to the nation's capital from the thousands of far-flung islands that make up this archipelago.
Some 50 million people were registered to vote.
But the election was not without glitches and violence.
The leading candidate in early Philippine election results, Sen. Benigno Aquino III, was not able to cast his vote because an electronic voting machine malfunctioned. He, like thousands of others, had to wait four hours before finally casting his ballot.
