20% of 72 Million ballots for May polls printed
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has already printed more than a fifth of the 72.1 million ballots that will be used in the May 12 national and local polls.
Comelec Chair George Erwin Garcia said that as of Thursday, more than 14.7 million ballots have been printed using equipment provided by the National Printing Office (NPO) and the poll body’s automation service provider, Korean firm Miru Systems Joint Venture.
“So far so good; the printing is orderly and quick, but we just have to speed up the verification of the ballots,” Garcia told reporters in an interview in Makati City.
To meet the target set by the Comelec, the printers from NPO should print 27.8 million more ballots while those of Miru have 29.4 million more to go.
Garcia earlier announced that the poll body would be using the Amoranto Sports Complex in Quezon City, aside from the NPO office, to house more automated counting machines (ACMs) that would be used to verify all ballots.
Good ballots only
The Comelec will only pay for “good” ballots or those that can be read by the ACMs. To speed up the process, it is also planning to hire 300 more verifiers in addition to the 800 already being deployed in shifts.
On Jan. 14, the poll body was forced to stop printing ballots for the midterm elections to accommodate a senatorial candidate whom it had earlier disqualified for being a nuisance candidate. A temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court to Subair Mustapha directed the Comelec to include his name in the ballots.
As a result, about 6 million ballots worth P132 million that were already printed had to be discarded. Printing was supposed to resume on Jan. 22, but it was again delayed when another senatorial candidate, Francis Leo Marcos, also secured a TRO similar to Mustapha’s.
Marcos, however, later announced his withdrawal from the senatorial race, saying he did not want to be the reason for government funds going to waste. Printing finally resumed on Jan. 27.
Garcia earlier said that despite the delay, they were confident of meeting the original deadline of having all 72 million ballots ready by April 14.
In addition, the Comelec will have less ballots to print once the bill postponing the Bangsamoro parliamentary elections to October instead of May is approved by the President.
