Comelec says 90% of ballots already printed

NINETY percent of the ballots that will be used in the May 12 national and local elections have already been printed, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Monday.

"Ninety percent of the 72 million ballots needed in the elections have already been printed. More or less, 8 million more ballots are needed to be printed," said Chairman George Erwin Garcia on Monday.

Before the end of the week or between March 14 and 16, the printing of ballots would be 100 percent complete, he said, but added that all printed ballots still need to undergo a verification process to ensure they meet quality requirements and specifications.

The poll chief admitted that the manual and machine verification of ballots trails the fast pace of the printing but said that it is fast catching up after they hired 300 more verifiers to augment the existing 800 who are doing the manual verification.

Garcia said almost 30 million ballots have so far been verified, and the process would be completed by April.

The Comelec is using the Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City because they need a big space for the manual verification of ballots, and as well as to accommodate the 500 automated counting machines that will be used for the process.

Garcia said the decision of the commission en banc to use all four printing machines of the National Printing Office and the two state-of-the art machines provided by technology provider Mirus Systems of South Korea provided the much-needed help to catch up with the three-week printing delay to give way for the insertion of the names of candidates who were earlier disqualified but won their appeals before the Supreme Court.

He added that the resetting of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao parliamentary elections from May 12 to Oct. 13, 2025 also gave the commission some leeway.