The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has so far printed 4.6 million official ballots for the 12 May polls since the start of reprinting on 27 January.

Comelec Chairperson George Garcia said they were able to print 1.6 million ballots on 31 January.

“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 said in an ambush interview.

1.7M a day

On Friday, Garcia said they hope to print 1.7 million more, exceeding the daily goal of the poll body to print 1.5 million ballots.

Based on the Comelec data, the running total of the final testing and sealing (FTS) of ballots that have been printed is 2,494,545 while the Canon printers of the National Printing Office have a running total of 2,295,459 official and FTS ballots printed.

The Comelec earlier said it is targeting to print more or less 72 million official ballots for national and local elections by 14 April.

The poll body resumed printing of ballots on Monday after being delayed repeatedly due to last-minute adjustments due to SC decisions involving several election aspirants.

Some six million official ballots have already been printed before the issuance of temporary restraining orders of the SC.