The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Saturday that it has already printed almost 30 million ballots for the upcoming midterm elections.

In a radio interview, Comelec Chairperson George Garcia said the poll body needs to print over 72 million ballots through the National Printing Office.

Garcia said the printed ballots represent 41 percent of the total ballots needed for the entire Philippines.

However, the number of verified ballots so far is around 5.5 million to six million only, Garcia said.

Garcia explained that a ballot may have errors incurred during the printing process.

"Not every ballot printed is perfect. It is like money being printed, there will always be an error. Some may have been cut wrong, or had the wrong color, or had a smudge," the poll chief said in Filipino.

This is why each ballot has to undergo a two-level verification process — one done manually and the other via machine, Garcia explained.

He added that Comelec has more than 1,000 personnel at the NPO manually verifying the ballots.

If a ballot does not pass their verification, it will no longer go through the machine level and will already be rejected.

So far, rejected or defective ballots amount to only seven to eight percent, according to Garcia.

However, with every rejected ballot, a new one has to be reprinted to take its place. The reprinted ballots will also be subjected to manual and machine verification.

"We cannot send ballots to a precinct with two or three pieces lacking. We have to ensure that the right number of ballots is sent to each precinct. The teachers might even be suspected as the culprits behind such missing ballots," he said.

Garcia assured that ballot printing must be completed by 14 April, less than a month before election day on 12 May.