The Commission on Elections has finished printing the ballots for the May 13 national and local elections.
Teopisto Elnas, Deputy Project Director, Project Management Office for the midterm polls, said they have printed more than 63 million ballots for the midterm polls.
“We are done with the printing of the ballots,” he said. “We only have around six million ballots for ballot verification and then it will be shipped,” added Elnas.
There are 61,843,750 registered voters for the May 13 polls, 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.
Elnas also revealed that they have started the deployment of the official ballots.
“Our priority areas ARMM, BaSulta (Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi), and Batanes area,” he said. “It is expected that by May 4, the official ballots are already in place in the different municipal and city treasurer’s office,” added Elnas.
The ballots will be dispatched to the different polling places through the electoral boards on Election Day, he said.
“Of course for far areas, there is a need to dispatch the day before or days before depending on the transportation facilities, distance, and security concerns…but generally official ballots will be dispatched early morning of May 13,” said Elnas. (Leslie Ann Aquino)
