In theory, expanding an election should strengthen voters’ participation.

More visibility. More competition. More time to vote. This year’s student elections appeared to offer all three. Yet the numbers tell a more complicated story.

This year’s HAUlalan was designed to bring more student voters to the polls: the filing of certificates of candidacy (CoCs) was publicly promoted, the presidential race was contested for the first time since 2023 with a new partylist entering the field, voting days were expanded from two to three, and various in-person precincts were set up across the campus to make participation more accessible.

Then, after the uniwide earthquake drill held March 10, Angelites who had not yet cast their ballots were directed to nearby voting precincts — an unusual step that turned voting into an unexpected stop in a campus activity.

With all these measures, it is clear that the structures meant to encourage participation were much stronger than before.

(Layout by Rolian Sarmiento)

Yet, despite the hard efforts to be visible, HAUlalan 2026 logged an overall final turnout of 52% or 4,939 votes, lower than the 54% final turnout or around 5,290 votes of HAUlalan 2025 held over a two-day voting period. 

While the difference might seem marginal, the implication is sobering: three days of voting ultimately produced nearly the same level of participation between the two election cycles.

At first glance, the explanation might seem simple: students are disengaged from campus politics.

But conversations with Angelites across departments reveal a different reality. Many students still express expectations of leadership, concerns about representation, and questions about governance. 

What they struggle with is not the idea of student democracy itself, but the system through which it currently operates — one where expanded election mechanisms have not necessarily translated into stronger connections between student governance and the students it seeks to represent.

Barriers to access

Digital voting was introduced with the promise of ease. Participation would become easier, faster, and more convenient. The ballot would no longer need one’s physical presence or rigid schedules; instead, students could finally vote through a few clicks on their screens.

But convenience, it turns out, has its prerequisites.

Before a student can cast a vote, they must first pass through the architecture of institutional systems — most notably the university-issued Microsoft accounts that serve as the gateway to the ballot.

When these systems work seamlessly, the process remains almost invisible. But once they falter, voter involvement stops before it could even begin.

Several students described encountering difficulties logging into their HAU Microsoft accounts, verification errors, and authentication loops while trying to access the voting platforms.

Reese Bondoc, a student from the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS), said they had been unable to cast a vote due to a technical issue.

“Because of this technical issue, I was not able to cast my vote yet,” Bondoc shared. 

Another SAS student, Jamaica Lugtu, reported experiencing the same problem. “Ayaw ma-open ng Microsoft [account] ko.”

These technical disruptions rarely announce themselves as political problems. They appear as inconveniences that students become used to: a password that will not authenticate or a verification process that never completes.

“The voting process felt complicated,” SAS student Yzzel Manalastas said. “Microsoft is often hard to access.”

Besides, democracy built on digital infrastructure is only as accessible as the systems that sustain it.

In this context, a malfunction becomes a point where the democratic process narrows and where participation depends not only on willingness but also on the ability to navigate and overcome institutional systems that may not always cooperate.

To some, what may appear as a small inconvenience becomes, at scale, an invisible barrier that filters who successfully reaches the ballot. Those who persist may eventually vote. While others who are pressed by academic deadlines or daily responsibilities, may simply move on.

“When the system is hard to access and the candidates aren’t that visible, people lose the motivation to participate,” Manalastas added.

A democratic process that relies heavily on digital infrastructure carries a responsibility to guarantee that access remains stable and reliable for every voter. When that system fails to introduce certainty, technology begins to act as a gatekeeper.

And when the act of voting requires troubleshooting institutional systems rather than simply expressing a choice, the distance between representation and the represented widens in ways that becomes impossible to ignore.

Elections without presence

For many Angelites, HAUlalan 2026 candidates did not appear much as people moving through the same hallways, classrooms, or campus spaces. Instead, they appeared primarily through posters, pubmats, and social media posts circulating across Facebook.

The campaign did become visible online, but some felt that the candidates themselves often remain distant.

Chrissina Adefuin, a BA Communication student, shared that she only felt the candidates through campaign posters and online materials rather than through direct interactions on campus.

“I don’t really see them in person,” Adefuin added. “Like I don’t really perceive them taking actions.”

Without these interactions, many students could only piece together their understanding of candidates through fragments of information scattered across their Facebook pages. There exists an awareness of the election, yes. But their familiarity with the candidates often develops slowly, if at all.

Some even discovered the election only after it had already begun, like Henry Nabors, BS Psychology student, who learned about the election later than most after spending time offline.

Others described continuing to search for information about candidate platforms because they still lacked a clear understanding of what each candidate proposed to do. The election was present in the background, yet the details necessary to make an informed decision remained difficult to grasp.

Simon Palo from the School of Computing (SOC) pointed to a similar difficulty while trying to understand the candidates themselves.

“I have not gotten much information on what their goals or plans would be for this university,” Palo said. “Sure, I could search for their Facebook pages but at some point in their interviews, their answers would come off as vague.”

He noted that many explanations felt unclear, suggesting that candidates should communicate their plans in ways that are convenient for the studentry.

These observations point to a gap in the political presence within the election itself.

Elections depend not on mere campaign materials, but also on moments of interaction that allow voters to recognize candidates as individuals who are seeking to represent them. When those interactions become rare, the relationship between the electorate and the candidates begin to weaken.

If students struggle to understand where candidates stand or what they truly intend for the next academic year, the problem does not begin with the voters themselves.

The issue is in how information circulates within the election system, and whether the structures of campaigning do truly create opportunities for students to interact, question, and understand the individuals asking for their vote.

Beyond student apathy

Low voter turnout is often reduced to a familiar explanation: student apathy.

It is an easy diagnosis — one that places responsibility on the electorate rather than examining the conditions that shape participation in the first place. But the hesitation many Angelites describe reveals something more complex than disinterest. 

It reflects a deeper unease with the choices placed before them.

For Angel Nicole Nunag from the School of Business and Accountancy (SBA), the problem begins with the difficulty of distinguishing candidates at all. After observing the campaign period, she notes that the platforms circulating online often feel indistinguishable from one another.

“Most of the candidates’ platforms also seem very similar, so it is difficult to distinguish what makes each of them different,” she shared. 

Nunag’s observation touches on a fundamental requirement of democratic elections: voters must be able to perceive meaningful differences between the visions competing for leadership. 

When those differences blur, participation becomes less about choosing a direction and more about navigating ambiguity.

For Rafaela Garcia, also from SBA, that hesitation becomes a matter of principle. After reviewing several campaign materials, she found herself unwilling to cast a vote simply to complete the process.

“At this point, I feel I’d be voting for the most viable candidate rather than one I truly believe is the best fit,” she noted.

Her decision to withhold her vote reflects a dilemma that rarely appears in voter turnout statistics: the tension between participation and endorsement. Elections depend not only on the presence of candidates but on the presence of convincing leadership. 

When voters perceive the options before them as underwhelming or interchangeable, participation becomes morally complicated. Casting a ballot no longer feels like an act of empowerment but a reluctant compromise.

This is where the language of “apathy” begins to fall apart.

Democratic participation is not sustained by obligation alone. It depends on the belief that one’s vote can meaningfully influence the direction of leadership. When that belief weakens, abstention may emerge not from indifference but from skepticism toward the electoral structure itself.

In such circumstances, disengagement can become a quiet form of critique. Because elections derive legitimacy not merely from turnout numbers, but from the perception that voters are choosing between genuine alternatives.

Without that sense of choice, participation risks becoming procedural rather than meaningful.

The crisis of institutional trust

Beyond the question of candidates lies another uncertainty — whether student leadership produces visible change at all.

For many Angelites, the difficulty of recalling concrete outcomes from previous administrations shapes how they approach the ballot today.

Alfonzo Adriano from the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) describes this uncertainty bluntly.

“While I do think that a student council has its purposes, the effects of their work aren’t felt or made known,” he shared.

His statement reflects a gap between governance and perception. Student councils may carry out initiatives behind the scenes, but if those efforts remain largely invisible to the student body, their impact becomes difficult to recognize.

And when achievements remain unseen, elections begin to feel detached from everyday student life.

Adriano suggests that the problem may not lie solely in what the council does, but in how its work is communicated to those it represents. 

“Because students aren’t aware of what the student government have done and what it can do, the students don’t feel obligated to vote,” he added.

Similar uncertainty appears when students consider the council’s role in addressing larger campus issues.

Simon Humprey Palo from the School of Computing (SOC) points to the ongoing discussion around tuition increases as an example of a concern students want addressed, but are unsure whether student leaders can meaningfully influence.

“My main concern would just be how would they be able to handle one of the main issues right now in HAU, that being the tuition increase,” he lamented.

Participation in democratic systems depends on a basic belief: that institutions have the capacity to shape real outcomes. 

Voting, in that context, begins to feel less like a decision that shapes campus life and more like a ritual that confirms leadership without necessarily fundamentally changing the conditions students navigate everyday.

What representation should mean

Viewed in isolation, low turnout might appear to be a straightforward problem of participation. But the stories shared by Angelites reveal a more layered picture — one where disengagement emerges from a convergence of systemic pressures rather than a simple lack of interest.

Many of the Angelites interviewed still express clear expectations of leadership: credibility, transparency, and the ability to address pressing concerns on campus.

What they question is whether the system currently asking for their vote is structured in a way that makes that vote meaningful.

An election can feature more candidates and still fail to offer voters a sense of genuine choice. And when participation appears unnecessary for candidates to secure positions — when leadership seems attainable simply by entering the race — the incentive to engage begins to erode.

Representation, at its core, is not about filling positions on a council. It is about building trust between leaders and the people they claim to serve.

Until that trust is strengthened, until the systems of campus democracy feel meaningfully embedded in student life, the ballot may continue to echo with quietness.

Not because Angelites have stopped caring about leadership.

But because they are still waiting for a system that makes their participation feel consequential.