Vote-buying in the Philippines is a rampaging monster that defeats the purpose of its citizens' right to suffrage. In our city, it became very vivid since two parties competed in buying votes – the money given to the people were usually in four digits (thousands). If you will do the math, our city has about one hundred fifty thousand people. When multiplied by about 3,000 pesos per voter, if we consider 70% of the population are registered voters, the parties running for their positions would try to spend about 315,000,000 pesos and it's no joke!

The calculation may be inaccurate but the point is that these parties exercising these illegal actions during elections are spending millions just to but votes. The sad thing is that they have become successful during the May 2019 Elections. Their entire party won without a doubt, given that they have reverberated conscience to the beneficiaries of their illegal actions. Naturally, many people would owe their votes strongly to these parties for the good amount of money they have given.

Republic Act 6646 of the Eighth Congress of the Philippines (AN ACT INTRODUCING ADDITIONAL REFORMS IN THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES) and Republic Act 9006 or the Fair Elections Act have already been present but not enforced well during elections. It was even stated in the RA 9006 that Php10 is the maximum spending of presidential and vice-presidential candidate per registered voter, Php5 for independent candidates and partylist groups, and Php3 for the rest of the candidates with political parties.

Considering the aforementioned laws, vote buying is straight up ILLEGAL and must be abolished. This puts the country's good governance, rights of the Filipinos in exercising their responsible voting, and national budget in tyranny. We must stop vote-buying NOW!