Comelec completes printing of 68.5M ballots
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) completed the printing of ballots at the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City on Saturday afternoon.
A total of 68,542,564 official ballots were printed by six machines from the NPO and Comelec’s poll automation service provider Miru Systems Co. Joint Venture.
Comelec Chair George Erwin Garcia, in a press conference at the NPO headquarters, said the printing took 48 days, with the poll body’s meeting its revised March 15 deadline.
The printing of official ballots using Miru’s two printing machines was originally targeted to finish on April 14 or April 15. Printing started on Jan. 6 but restraining orders issued by the Supreme Court that month ordering Comelec to include names of candidates earlier declared as “nuisance” or disqualified forced the poll body stop printing for two weeks.
After disposing some six million ballots, printing started over on Jan. 27. To compensate for the delay, the Comelec authorized four NPO printers to join Miru in the production of the ballots and deploy more automated counting machines (ACMs) to verify that the ballots are readable.
Serendipitous
Printing was also sped up after three million separate ballots for the Bangsamoro parliamentary elections were no longer printed with the election’s postponement to Oct. 13, he said.
Garcia said the verification of the ballots to determine whether they will be readable by the ACMs is expected to finish on April 20 or April 21, he said. On the average, 1.23 million would be verified daily.
Since printing started, more than 50 percent of all ballots have been verified as “good” ballots. There were about 2.2 million “bad” ballots or those unreadable by the ACMs but these are already being replaced, he added.
Comelec’s packing and shipping committee will distribute the ballots and other election paraphernalia in time for the final testing and sealing of the ACMs from May 2 to May 7.
