NPO still printer of ballots
The National Printing Office (NPO) will still be handling the printing of the official ballots to be used in the 2016 elections.
“Let us be clear, the NPO will do the printing. That is provided for by law… NPO seems interested. So, by law, they should do the printing,” said Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Andres Bautista.
The Comelec issued the statement after some lawmakers questioned the poll body’s decision to bundle the ballot printing services with the bidding for the lease of the optical mark reader (OMR) machines. The OMR lease contract was eventually won by the Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp.
According to the provisions of the Omnibus Election Code, the official ballots and election returns are to be printed by the “Government Printing Office and/or the Central Bank printing facilities exclusively.”
The Comelec, on the other hand, is tasked to “determine and provide the necessary security measures in the printing, storage and distribution” of the ballots.
Compatible
Commissioner Christian Robert Lim explained that the bundling of the printing services with the OMR lease contract was aimed at ensuring that the paper that will be used for making the ballots is compatible with the voting machines.
“When we bid it out, we didn’t know if there are certain types of paper, certain types of printing materials needed by the machines. That’s why we had the balllot printing bundled with the OMR bidding because we want the paper, we want the ballots to be extremely compatible with the machines,” he said.
“We are assured that the paper will be of the exact specification for the optimal use of the OMRs,” Lim added.
The bundling will also prevent the recurrence of “optical scan artifacts” arising from the accumulation of paper fibers, Lim said, apparently referring to the appearance of digital lines in the ballots, which became an issue in the 2013 elections.
Lim, however, stressed that the terms of reference of the contract clearly indicated that the the winning bidder would still have to coordinate with either the NPO or the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) as the law requires that NPO or the BSP be the ones to print the ballots.
“It is only when the NPO or the BSP issues the certification that they cannot handle the printing, that’s when we go out,” Lim said.
