The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday reported that it has so far printed 4.6 million official ballots for the 12 May polls since reprinting began on 27 January.

Comelec Chairperson George Garcia said the poll body was able to print 1.6 million ballots on Thursday.

"Doon pa lang makikita niyo na ang ating daily output. Noong nakaraang araw, 1.3 million kasi may mga adjustment na hindi nagamit ang isang machine (You can see our daily output right there. The previous day, we printed 1.3 million because there were adjustments with that one machine that was not used)," Garcia told reporters in an ambush interview.

Garcia said they hoped to print 1.7 million more ballots Friday, exceeding the 1.5 million daily target.

Based on Comelec data, 2,494,545 Final Testing and Sealing (FTS) ballots have been printed so far. Meanwhile, the Canon printers of the National Printing Office have produced 2,295,459 official and FTS ballots.

Comelec earlier stated that it is targeting to print around 72 million official ballots for the national and local elections by 14 April.

The poll body resumed ballot printing on Monday after repeated delays caused by last-minute adjustments following Supreme Court (SC) rulings involving several election aspirants.

Before the issuance of the SC’s temporary restraining orders (TROs), six million official ballots had already been printed.