2 weeks Ago By Anton Banal
AFTER 48 days, the 68.5 million official ballots set to be used in the May 12, 2025 polls have been printed, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). In a press conference, Comelec Chairman George Garcia announced Saturday, March 15, 2025, that they had successfully printed 68,542,564 official ballots for the midterm elections, despite having to restart the process due to legal reasons.
"We started on January 27, and we are now done printing the 68,542,564 official ballots," said Garcia. "We have proven that we can finish the job despite the challenges we faced during the printing process," he added. He explained that their strategy of using both the two HP printers from Miru Systems and the four Canon printers from the National Printing Office (NPO) had proven to be effective.
"Using six printers in total enabled us to print the ballots faster," said Garcia. The poll chief expressed pride in their achievement, noting that it occurred despite having to suspend and restart the ballot printing process due to multiple temporary restraining orders (TROs) issued by the Supreme Court (SC). "We are proud of this because we complied with the SC TRO; we didn’t defy it.
For almost two weeks, we stopped the printing of ballots and set aside six million ballots...
Despite this, we were able to complete the task," said Garcia. He confirmed that the Comelec printed an exact number of official ballots, equal to the number of registered voters. "Our ratio is 1:1.
We don’t have any excess ballots," said Garcia. On the other hand, he mentioned that they encountered a total of 2.2 million "bad" or rejected ballots during the printing process.
"That's already a good number. At the start, we really had to adjust the machines, the color, and the texture. Later on, the printing process went smoother, and the number of rejected ballots decreased," Garcia explained.
Verification next With the ballot printing now completed, the Commission said it would now focus on verifying the ballots. The verification process consists of two parts: manual verification and verification via automated counting machines (ACMs). Garcia stated that they aim to verify an average of 1.
2 million ballots per day. "Currently, we have already verified 50 percent of the ballots," said Garcia. He added that they aim to finish the verification process by April 20 or 21.
"By that time, the remaining ballots will be for the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, or Central Luzon. These will be easy to deploy," Garcia concluded. (Anton Banal/SunStar Philippines).
