The printing of ballots in the May 13 mid-term election is more than halfway complete.
Data from the Printing Committee of the Commission on Elections said yesterday that 38,347,754 ballots or 60.24 percent of the 63,662,481 total number of ballots have been printed as March 19.
Only the ballots for three regions have yet to be printed by the Comelec.
“The remaining ballots to be printed are for Regions 1 (Ilocos region) and 2 (Cagayan Valley) and the National Capital Region,” Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said.
With the current rate, Jimenez said ballot printing may be completed before Holy Week begins.
“This is earlier than the initial target date of April 25, 2019,” he said.
Printing of ballots at the National Printing Office in Quezon City went on full capacity last Feb. 20 with the printing machines cranking out an average one million ballots per day.
There are 61,843,750 registered voters for the elections but more than 1.1 million ballots will be used for the final testing and sealing process while the rest are demonstration ballots allotted for vote-counting machine road show and demonstration purposes. (Leslie Ann Aquino)