I’ve been invited several times to participate in them and here are some of the online polls that I have been invited to.

http://www.philippinedailybrew.com/philippines/poll-who-will-you-vote-for-2010-philippine-president.html

http://apps.facebook.com/election_twenty_ten/

http://presidenteko.com/index.php

http://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/

http://apps.facebook.com/philelection/

http://professionalheckler.wordpress.com/

http://www.philippineselections.com/presidential-poll-2010

I don’t believe that online polls will have a profound impact on how the real polls in May 2010 will turn out.  They are really just surveys where the results are displayed in real time, online.

In certain instances, these online polls become the battle ground for the online campaigners of various candidates.  In some cases where online polls allow participants to leave a comment, the digital equivalent of a brawl erupts when one campaigner or poll participant engages another in an argument over who is the better candidate.  They trade barbs and insults as if their life and their entire future depended on it.

What I find funny is when an online brawl erupts over the results of an online poll which doesn’t even prevent users from casting multiple votes.

The argument sometimes begins when commenter 1 says “Candidate A is better than candidate B because more people voted for him in online poll X.”  and commenter 2 confronts commenter 1 by saying “Yeah but candidate B is a better candidate than candidate A because he topped online poll Y! And online poll Y has more participants than online poll X!”

Oh brother!  I think such arguments over who is the more popular candidate in whatever online poll belongs in market places and street corners, not on the internet where everybody on earth can see just how loony Filipinos can get over what is in reality a spiffy but petty popularity contest.

The popularity of a candidate shouldn’t even be a consideration among voters.

There is actually an erroneous notion going around that a candidate’s popularity is proof that the candidate can unite the country.  So, going by this false logic, the more popular a candidate is, the more unified a country becomes.

Sorry to break this to those who believe that popularity = unity, but, popularity wanes.

If, God forbid, the popularity of one person becomes the only thing that is holding a country together, we will most likely find our country involved in a Civil War as soon as that person’s popularity wanes for one reason or another.

Think of it this way folks, if a candidate’s or leader’s popularity rating dips by 10 percent are our countrymen then 10 percent less united?

On the other hand, consider what happens when a candidate or leader becomes extremely unpopular, isn’t the country then united against that candidate or leader?

What if a survey says that 99 percent of Filipinos absolutely hate candidate or leader X, wouldn’t this be proof that unpopularity is a bigger unifying factor than popularity?

In truth, I think Filipinos are better at uniting AGAINST something rather than uniting FOR something and this is one of the reasons why the country is the way it is.

We united against Marcos but really didn’t have a better alternative, instead, we settled for the least contentious popular figure to take his position in the hopes that this will unify a fractured country.  What happened? 9 coup attempts, a resurgence of communist rebel attacks, and the rise of muslim dissident groups.  Was that UNITY?

We united against Estrada but really didn’t have a better alternative, instead, we settled for someone who was touted as lesser evil.

Now, we are united against Macapagal Arroyo and again, it seems we are going to settle for someone who is touted as the lesser evil or the only choice.

The lesson that our recent history as a revived democracy is this, if we continue to keep settling for the most agreeable option rather than working to create a correct and better option, we can expect to go through the same bad things all over again — perhaps even worse.

The real task at hand in the following months is not to make ensure the popularity of one candidate or another, but to create a better option for our country and support that better option with all our might while exposing the false “pwede na” options that we find.