THE Commission on Elections remains on track in its ballot printing targets, as the National Printing Office (NPO) reported having completed printing of around 90 percent of the 67.44 million ballots to be used for the 2022 polls.
However, Comelec Commissioner George M. Garcia disclosed only about 39.43 million of the 58.83 million printed ballots declared “good” are now ready for deployment.
“Good ballots means [they] passed through the highest qualified control,” Garcia said at a press conference last Thursday.
Comelec conducted random checks on the good ballots to make sure they were accepted by the vote counting machines (VCM) to be used for the May 9 National and Local Elections (NLE).
Verification process
Over 13.24 million ballots are still going through the verification or qualification control process.
The other 6.16 million ballots were placed under “quarantine” after some of the ballots in this printed batch showed defects such as smudges and miscut.
Of the quarantined ballots, Garcia said 105,853 were declared defective and are set to be destroyed.
He said they will be reprinting ballots to replace the defective ones.
Comelec earlier announced it is eyeing to wrap up the ballot printing by next month.
VIS distribution
Garcia announced all of the Voter Information Sheets (VIS) for voters were also printed and are ready for distribution by Comelec personnel.
The VIS includes the voter’s name, address, the precinct and the place where he is registered, and simplified instructions for casting of votes.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said they included unique markings in the VIS so voters could determine if it is authentic or not.
He said they implemented the measure to prevent unscrupulous individuals from spreading fake VIS, which could confuse voters come election day.
“The problem we foresee is some people may distribute bogus VIS with wrong precinct assignment as a means of voter suppression. So we come out with said markings to serve as proof that the VIS a voter recieved is authentic and orginal,” Jimenez said.