The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is set to shred over 5.2 million printed “defective” ballots for the 2022 automated polls.
Comelec Commissioner Marlon S. Caquejo disclosed of the 49.7 ballots printed by the National Printing Office (NPO), 5,288,268 contained smudges or miscut thus considered unusable.
He attributed the said “defects” to the brand new printers, which were used for the printing of ballots to be used in the May National and Local Election (NLE).
The said “defective” ballots will be disposed of while being witnessed by election observers.
Meanwhile, the other 32 million printed ballots were deemed “good” and were stored in the Comelec’s warehouse in Pasig and are now ready for deployment.
Last stretch
Casquejo noted the NPO already printed the ballots to be used for all the regions except for the National Capital Region (NCR) as well as in Central Luzon.
Of the 7.2 millions ballots to be used for Region 3, 65.23 percent or 4.76 million were already printed.
None of the 7.3 million ballots to be used in NCR have been printed as of 7 am of March 15, 2022.
Over 67.44 million ballots will be used for the automated 2022 polls.
This is aside from the 226,225 manual ballots, which were already printed by the NPO and will be used for local absentee voting, overseas manual voting, and 63 barangays in North Cotabato.
Comelec earlier said the NPO is expected to complete the ballot printing by April.
Lack of transparency
In a related development, Casquejo also addressed the criticism by election lawyer Romulo B. Macalintal made against him for disallowing the request to allow the watchers and/or representatives of Vice President Leonor “Leni” G. Robredo to observe the printing of the official ballots.
Macalintal, who served as legal counsel of Robredo, alleged Casquejo’s decision, which was done without the concurrence of other members of the Comelec en banc, violated the legal rights of the political parties and candidates to witness the ballot printing.
In making his decision, Casquejo cited there were “critical areas” in the NPO office, which should not be accessed by non-Comelec personnel since it may delay the printing process.
The poll official explained the access restriction in the NPO was meant to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in printing facilities.
Macalintal said the issue could have been easily addressed if the Comelec had live-streamed the ballot printing “for transparency’s sake.”
Casquejo said the comment on the matter and suggestion for a random ballot test of Macalintal will be discussed in the next Comelec en banc meeting. (Samuel Medenilla)
Image credits: Roy Domingo