Ballot printing finished by 14 April

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Monday it is still targeting to finish printing of all ballots for the national and local elections by 14 April.

The poll body resumed on Monday the printing of ballots after being delayed repeatedly due to last-minute adjustments made by the Supreme Court (SC).

“Again, April 14 is still our proposed deadline to complete the printing of 72 million more or less ballots,” Comelec Chairperson George Garcia said in a press briefing at the National Printing Office (NPO).

“At least 1.5 million ballots sa isang araw ang plano nating iimprenta sa kasalukuyan We plan to print at least 1.5 million ballots a day,” Garcia said.

The Comelec chief said the poll body assigned 800 personnel to the NPO to conduct ballot verifications.

The Comelec started the printing of the 73 million ballots for this year’s polls on 6 January but was halted following the issuance of the SC of a series of TROs against disqualification cases of several aspirants.

This resulted in the waste of P6 million printed ballots, with a financial loss amounting to P132 million.

The Comelec on Sunday uploaded the new ballot faces for the midterm polls on its website which contain the 66 senatorial aspirants and 156 partylist group organizations, as well as the local hopefuls running for provincial, municipality, and congressional district seats.